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Life  and  Habit 


Re-Issue  of  the  Works  of 
the  late  Samuel  Butler 

Reset  in  new  type  and  uniform  in  binding. 

Samuel  Butler  was  " In  his  <nvn  department"  says 
Mr.  Bernard  Shaivt  "the  greatest  English  ivriter  of 
the  latter  half  of  the  i$th  century" 

The  Way  of  All  Flesh. 

A  Novel.     I2mo.     Net  $1.50. 

Erewhon,    or   Over    the    Range. 

lamo.     Net  $1.25. 

Erewhon  Revisited  Twenty  Years 
Later  : 

Both  by  the  original  discoverer  of  the  country 
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Unconscious  Memory. 

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E.    P.   DUTTON   &   COMPANY 

31  "West     23d     Street,     New     York 


Life  and  Habit 

By 

Samuel  Butler 

Author  of  "Erewhon,"  "fife  Way  of  All  Flc»h," 
14  Unconscious  Memory,"  etc. 


TOIOVTOI  81  Svrct  &i>9p6iruv  (*ti>  ivivruv  Kara(f>povovfft. 

LUCIAN,  Icaromenippus,  30 
"  We  are  all  terribly  afraid  of  them."  —  Paraphrase 

rolriv  ravrd  rt  dirayyeiXai  T(J>  Atl  /cat  vpovOetval  5' 
dwarbv  tart  /JLOI  mrdi  xdipai>  ptveiv,  ty  ^  roi)y  <f>v<riKo{>s 


Ecrrai  raura,  •Jfv  5'  iyij).—LvciA*i,Icaromenipftts,  21,  22 

"  Lay  it  well,  therefore,  before  Jupiter,  that  if  he  will  not  bring 

these  men  of  science  to  their   proper  bearings,  I   can  itay  here  no 

longer."  .  .   . 

"It  shall  be  done,"  I  answered.  —  Paraphrase 


NEW  YORK 

E  P  DUTTON  &  COMPANY 
31  West  Twenty-Third  Street 


THIS  BOOK   IS  INSCRIBED 
TO 

CHARLES   PAINE  PAUL!,  ESQ. 

BARRISTER-AT-LAW 

IN  ACKNOWLEDGMENT  OF  HIS  INVALUABLE 
CRITICISM  OF  THE  PROOF-SHEETS  OF  THIS  AND 

OF  MY   PREVIOUS  BOOKS 

AND  IN  RECOGNITION  OF  AN  OLD  AND 

WELL-TRIED   FRIENDSHIP 


CONTENTS. 


PREFACE   BY    R.  A.   STREATFEILD         .  Vll 

AUTHOR'S  ORIGINAL  PREFACE          .  x 

CHAPTEB 

I.     ON   CERTAIN  ACQUIRED   HABITS          .  .  .  I 

II.     CONSCIOUS  AND  UNCONSCIOUS  KNOWERS — THE  LAW 

AND    GRACE  .  .  2O 

III.  APPLICATION  OF  FOREGOING  CHAPTERS  TO  CERTAIN 

HABITS    ACQUIRED    AFTER    BIRTH    WHICH    ARE 
COMMONLY   CONSIDERED    INSTINCTIVE         .  .         43 

IV.  APPLICATION    OF    THE    FOREGOING    PRINCIPLES    TO 

ACTIONS  AND   HABITS   ACQUIRED   BEFORE  BIRTH         59 
V.     PERSONAL    IDENTITY         ".  «  ...          78 

vi.    PERSONAL  IDENTITY  (continued)      .            .  91 

VII.   OUR  SUBORDINATE  PERSONALITIES    .            .  .104 
VIII.   APPLICATION  OF  THE  FOREGOING  CHAPTERS — THE 

ASSIMILATION  OF  OUTSIDE  MATTER         .  .125 
IX.   ON  THE  ABEYANCE  OF  MEMORY      .            .  .150 
X.   WHAT  WE  SHOULD  EXPECT  TO  FIND  IF  DIFFEREN- 
TIATIONS OF  STRUCTURE   AND   INSTINCT  ARE 
MAINLY  DUE  TO  MEMORY           ./         .  .     1 66 
XI.   INSTINCT  AS  INHERITED  MEMORY    .            .  .198 
XII.   INSTINCTS  OF  NEUTER  INSECTS       .            .  .     22O 

XIII.  LAMARCK  AND  MR.  DARWIN            »            .  .     252 

XIV.  MR.  MIVART  AND  MR.  DARWIN        .            .  .273 
XV.   CONCLUDING  REMARKS     .                .    ,        ,  .     294 

APPENDIX— AUTHOR'S  ADDENDA      .  .     308 


PREFACE. 

SINCE  Samuel  Butler  published  "Life  and  Habit"  thirty- 
three1  years  have  elapsed — years  fruitful  in  change 
and  discovery,  during  which  many  of  the  mighty  have 
been  put  down  from  their  seat  and  many  of  the  humble 
have  been  exalted.  I  do  not  know  that  Butler  can 
truthfully  be  called  humble,  indeed,  I  think  he  had 
very  few  misgivings  as  to  his  ultimate  triumph,  but  he 
has  certainly  been  exalted  with  a  rapidity  that  he  him- 
self can  scarcely  have  foreseen.  During  his  lifetime 
he  was  a  literary  pariah,  the  victim  of  an  organized 
conspiracy  of  silence.  He  is  now,  I  think  it  may  be 
said  without  exaggeration,  universally  accepted  as  one 
of  the  most  remarkable  English  writers  of  the  latter 
part  of  the  nineteenth  century.  I  will  not  weary  my 
readers  by  quoting  the  numerous  tributes  paid  by  dis- 
tinguished contemporary  writers  to  Butler's  origin- 
ality and  force  of  mind,  but  I  cannot  refrain  from 
illustrating  the  changed  attitude  of  the  scientific  world 
to  Butler  and  his  theories  by  a  reference  to  "  Darwin 
and  Modern  Science,"  the  collection  of  essays  published 
in  1909  by  the  University  of  Cambridge,  in  com- 
memoration of  the  Darwin  centenary.  In  that  work 
Professor  Bateson,  while  referring  repeatedly  to  Butler's 
biological  works,  speaks  of  him  as  "  the  most  brilliant 
and  by  far  the  most  interesting  of  Darwin's  opponents, 
whose  works  are  at  length  emerging  from  oblivion." 

1  Although  the  original  edition  of  "Life  and  Habit"  is  dated 
1878,  the  book  was  actually  published  in  December,  1877. 


viii  PREFACE 

With  the  growth  of  Butler's  reputation  "Life  and 
Habit"  has  had  much  to  do.  It  was  the  first  and 
is  undoubtedly  the  most  important  of  his  writings  on 
evolution.  From  its  loins,  as  it  were,  sprang  his  three 
later  books,  "  Evolution  Old  and  New,"  "  Unconscious 
Memory,"  and  "  Luck  or  Cunning  ? ",  which  carried  its 
arguments  further  afield.  It  will  perhaps  interest 
Butler's  readers  if  I  here  quote  a  passage  from  his 
note-books,  lately  published  in  the  "  New  Quarterly 
Eeview  "  (Vol.  III.  No.  9),  in  which  he  summarizes  his 
work  in  biology : 

"  To  me  it  seems  that  my  contributions  to  the  theory 
of  evolution  have  been  mainly  these : 

"  1.  The  identification  of  heredity  and  memory,  and 
the  corollaries  relating  to  sports,  the  reversion  to 
remote  ancestors,  the  phenomena  of  old  age,  the  causes 
of  the  sterility  of  hybrids,  and  the  principles  under- 
lying longevity — all  of  which  follow  as  a  matter  of 
course.  This  was  '  Life  and  Habit '  [1877]. 

"  2.  The  re-introduction  of  teleology  into  organic 
life,  which  to  me  seems  hardly,  if  at  all,  less  important 
than  the  '  Life  and  Habit '  theory.  This  was  '  Evolu- 
tion Old  and  New '  [1879]. 

"3.  An  attempt  to  suggest  an  explanation  of  the 
physics  of  memory.  This  was  '  Unconscious  Memory ' 
[1880].  I  was  alarmed  by  the  suggestion  and  fathered 
it  upon  Professor  Hering,  who  never,  that  I  can  see, 
meant  to  say  anything  of  the  kind,  but  I  forced  my 
view  upon  him,  as  it  were,  by  taking  hold  of  a  sentence 
or  two  in  his  lecture,  'On  Memory  as  a  Universal 
Function  of  Organised  Matter/  and  thus  connected 
memory  with  vibrations. 

"What  I  want  to  do  now  (1885)  is  to  connect  vibra- 
tions not  only  with  memory  but  with  the  physical  con- 
stitution of  that  body  in  which  the  memory  resides, 


PREFACE  ix 

thus  adopting  Newland's  law  (sometimes  called  Men- 
delejeft" s  law)  that  there  is  only  one  substance,  and 
that  the  characteristics  of  the  vibrations  going  on 
within  it  at  any  given  time  will  determine  whether  it 
will  appear  to  us  as,  we  will  say,  hydrogen,  or  sodium, 
or  chicken  doing  this,  or  chicken  doing  the  other." 
[This  is  touched  upon  in  the  concluding  chapter  of 
"  Luck  or  Cunning  ? "  1887]. 

The  present  edition  of  "  Life  and  Habit "  is  practi- 
cally a  re-issue  of  that  of  1878.  I  find  that  about  the 
year  1890,  although  the  original  edition  was  far  from 
being  exhausted,  Butler  began  to  make  corrections  of 
the  text  of  "Life  and  Habit,"  presumably  with  the 
intention  of  publishing  a  revised  edition.  The  copy  of 
the  book  so  corrected  is  now  in  my  possession.  In  the 
first  five  chapters  there  are  numerous  emendations, 
very  few  of  which,  however,  affect  the  meaning  to  any 
appreciable  extent,  being  mainly  concerned  with  the 
excision  of  redundancies  and  the  simplification  of  style. 
I  imagine  that  by  the  time  he  had  reached  the  end  of 
the  fifth  chapter  Butler  realised  that  the  corrections 
he  had  made  were  not  of  sufficient  importance  to 
warrant  a  new  edition,  and  determined  to  let  the  book 
stand  as  it  was.  I  believe,  therefore,  that  I  am  carry- 
ing out  his  wishes  in  reprinting  the  present  edition 
from  the  original  plates.  I  have  found,  however, 
among  his  papers  three  entirely  new  passages,  which 
he  probably  wrote  during  the  period  of  correction  and 
no  doubt  intended  to  incorporate  into  the  revised 
edition.  Mr.  Henry  Festing  Jones  has  also  given  me 
a  copy  of  a  passage  which  Butler  wrote  and  gummed 
into  Mr.  Jones's  copy  of "  Life  and  Habit."  These  four 
passages  I  have  printed  as  an  appendix  at  the  end  of 
the  present  volume. 


x  PREFACE 

One  more  point  deserves  notice.  Butler  often  refers 
in  "  Life  and  Habit "  to  Darwin's  "  Variations  of 
Animals  and  Plants  under  Domestication."  When  he 
does  so  it  is  always  under  the  name  "Plants  and 
Animals."  More  often  still  he  refers  to  Darwin's 
"  Origin  of  Species  by  means  of  Natural  Selection," 
terming  it  at  one  time  "  Origin  of  Species "  and  at 
another  "  Natural  Selection,"  sometimes,  as  on  p.  278, 
using  both  names  within  a  few  lines  of  each  other. 
Butler  was  as  a  rule  scrupulously  careful  about  quota- 
tions, and  I  can  offer  no  explanation  of  this  curious 
confusion  of  titles. 

R.  A.  STREATFEILD. 

November,  1910. 


AUTHOR'S  PREFACE. 

THE  Italics  in  the  passages  quoted  in  this  book  are 
generally  mine,  but  I  found  it  almost  impossible  to 
call  the  reader's  attention  to  this  upon  every  occasion. 
I  have  done  so  once  or  twice,  as  thinking  it  necessary 
in  these  cases  that  there  should  be  no  mistake ;  on  the 
whole,  however,  I  thought  it  better  to  content  myself 
with  calling  attention  in  a  preface  to  the  fact  that  the 
author  quoted  is  not,  as  a  general  rule,  responsible  for 
the  Italics. 

S.  BUTLER. 

November  13,  1877. 


LIFE   AND    HABIT. 

CHAPTEE  I. 

ON  CERTAIN  ACQUIRED  HABITS. 

IT  will  be  our  business  in  the  following  chapters  to 
consider  whether  the  unconsciousness,  or  quasi-uncon- 
sciousness,  with  which  we  perform  certain  acquired 
actions,  would  seem  to  throw  any  light  upon  Embry- 
ology and  inherited  instincts,  and  otherwise  to  follow 
the  train  of  thought  which  the  class  of  actions  above- 
mentioned  would  suggest ;  more  especially  in  so  far  as 
they  appear  to  bear  upon  the  origin  of  species  and  the 
continuation  of  life  by  successive  generations,  whether 
in  the  animal  or  vegetable  kingdoms. 

In  the  outset,  however,  I  would  wish  most  distinctly 
to  disclaim  for  these  pages  the  smallest  pretension 
to  scientific  value,  originality,  or  even  to  accuracy 
of  more  than  a  very  rough  and  ready  kind — for  unless 
a  matter  be  true  enough  to  stand  a  good  deal  of 
misrepresentation,  its  truth  is  not  of  a  very  robust 
order,  and  the  blame  will  rather  lie  with  its  own 
delicacy  if  it  be  crushed,  than  with  the  carelessness  of 


a  LIFE  AND  HABIT. 

the  crasher.  I  have  no  wish  to  instruct,  and  not  much 
to  be  instructed ;  my  aim  is  simply  to  entertain  and 
interest  the  numerous  class  of  people  who,  like  myself, 
know  nothing  of  science,  but  who  enjoy  speculating 
and  reflecting  (not  too  deeply)  upon  the  phenomena 
around  them.  I  have  therefore  allowed  myself  a  loose 
rein,  to  run  on  with  whatever  came  uppermost,  without 
regard  to  whether  it  was  new  or  old ;  feeling  sure  that 
if  true,  it  must  be  very  old  or  it  never  could  have 
occurred  to  one  so  little  versed  in  science  as  myself; 
and  knowing  that  it  is  sometimes  pleasanter  to  meet 
the  old  under  slightly  changed  conditions,  than  to  go 
through  the  formalities  and  uncertainties  of  making 
new  acquaintance.  At  the  same  time,  I  should  say 
that  whatever  I  have  knowingly  taken  from  any  one 
else,  I  have  always  acknowledged. 

It  is  plain,  therefore,  that  my  book  cannot  be 
intended  for  the  perusal  of  scientific  people;  it  is 
intended  for  the  general  public  only,  with  whom  I 
believe  myself  to  be  in  harmony,  as  knowing  neither 
much  more  nor  much  less  than  they  do. 

Taking  then,  the  art  of  playing  the  piano  as  an 
example  of  the  kind  of  action  we  are  in  search  of,  we 
observe  that  a  practised  player  will  perform  very  diffi- 
cult pieces  apparently  without  effort,  often,  indeed, 
while  thinking  and  talking  of  something  quite  other 
than  his  music ;  yet  he  will  play  accurately  and,  pos- 
sibly, with  much  expression.  If  he  has  been  playing  a 
fugue,  say  in  four  parts,  he  will  have  kept  each  part 
well  distinct,  in  such  a  manner  as  to  prove  that  his 
mind  was  not  prevented,  by  its  other  occupations,  from 


ON  CERTAIN  ACQUIRED  HABITS.  3 

consciously  or  unconsciously  following  four  distinct 
trains  of  musical  thought  at  the  same  time,  nor  from 
making  his  fingers  act  in  exactly  the  required  manner 
as  regards  each  note  of  each  part. 

It  commonly  happens  that  in  the  course  of  four  or 
five  minutes  a  player  may  have  struck  four  or  five 
thousand  notes.  If  we  take  into  consideration  the 
rests,  dotted  notes,  accidentals,  variations  of  time,  &c., 
we  shall  find  his  attention  must  have  been  exercised 
on  many  more  occasions  than  when  he  was  actually 
striking  notes :  so  that  it  may  not  be  too  much  to  say 
that  the  attention  of  a  first-rate  player  may  have  been 
exercised — to  an  infinitesimally  small  extent — but 
still  truly  exercised — on  as  many  as  ten  thousand 
occasions  within  the  space  of  five  minutes,  for  no  note 
can  be  struck  nor  point  attended  to  without  a  certain 
amount  of  attention,  no  matter  how  rapidly  or  uncon- 
sciously given. 

Moreover,  each  act  of  attention  has  been  followed 
by  an  act  of  volition,  and  each  act  of  volition  by  a 
muscular  action,  which  is  composed  of  many  minor 
actions  ;  some  so  small  that  we  can  no  more  follow 
them  than  the  player  himself  can  perceive  them ; 
nevertheless,  it  may  have  been  perfectly  plain  that  the 
player  was  not  attending  to  what  he  was  doing,  but 
was  listening  to  conversation  on  some  other  subject, 
not  to  say  joining  in  it  himself.  If  he  has  been  play- 
ing the  violin,  he  may  have  done  all  the  above,  and 
may  also  have  been  walking  about.  Herr  Joachim 
would  unquestionably  be  able  to  do  all  that  has  here 
been  described. 


4  LIFE  AND  HABIT, 

So  complete  would  the  player's  unconsciousness 
of  the  attention  he  is  giving,  and  the  brain  power  he  is 
exerting  appear  to  be,  that  we  shall  find  it  difficult  to 
awaken  his  attention  to  any  particular  part  of  his 
performance  without  putting  him  out.  Indeed  we 
cannot  do  so.  We  shall  observe  that  he  finds  it  hardly 
less  difficult  to  compass  a  voluntary  consciousness 
of  what  he  has  once  learnt  so  thoroughly  that  it 
has  passed,  so  to  speak,  into  the  domain  of  uncon- 
sciousness, than  he  found  it  to  learn  the  note  or 
passage  in  the  first  instance.  The  effort  after  a 
second  consciousness  of  detail  baffles  him — compels 
him  to  turn  to  his  music  or  play  slowly.  In  fact  it 
seems  as  though  he  knew  the  piece  too  well  to  be  able 
to  know  that  he  knows  it,  and  is  only  conscious  of 
knowing  those  passages  which  he  does  not  know 
so  thoroughly. 

At  the  end  of  his  performance,  his  memory  would 
appear  to  be  no  less  annihilated  than  was  his  con- 
sciousness of  attention  and  volition.  For  of  the  thou- 
sands of  acts  requiring  the  exercise  of  both  the  one 
and  the  other,  which  he  has  done  during  the  five 
minutes,  we  will  say,  of  his  performance,  he  will 
remember  hardly  one  when  it  is  over.  If  he  calls  to 
mind  anything  beyond  the  main  fact  that  he  has 
played  such  and  such  a  piece,  it  will  probably  be 
some  passage  which  he  has  found  more  difficult  than 
the  others,  and  with  the  like  of  which  he  has  not  been 
so  long  familiar.  All  the  rest  he  will  forget  as  com- 
pletely as  the  breath  which  he  has  drawn  while 
playing. 


ON  CER TAIN  A  CQ UIRED  HABITS.  5 

He  finds  it  difficult  to  remember  even  the  diffi- 
culties he  experienced  in  learning  to  play.  A  few  may 
have  so  impressed  him  that  they  remain  with  him,  but 
the  greater  part  will  have  escaped  him  as  completely 
as  the  remembrance  of  what  he  ate,  or  how  he  put  on 
his  clothes,  this  day  ten  years  ago ;  nevertheless,  it  is 
plain  he  remembers  more  than  he  remembers  remem- 
bering, for  he  avoids  mistakes  which  he  made  at  one 
time,  and  his  performance  proves  that  all  the  notes 
are  in  his  memory,  though  if  called  upon  to  play  such 
and  such  a  bar  at  random  from  the  middle  of  the 
piece,  and  neither  more  nor  less,  he  will  probably  say 
that  he  cannot  remember  it  unless  he  begins  from  the 
beginning  of  the  phrase  which  leads  to  it.  Very  com- 
monly he  will  be  obliged  to  begin  from  the  beginning 
of  the  movement  itself,  and  be  unable  to  start  at  any 
other  point  unless  he  have  the  music  before  him ;  and 
if  disturbed,  as  we  have  seen  above,  he  will  have  to 
start  de  noro  from  an  accustomed  starting-point. 

Yet  nothing  can  be  more  obvious  than  that  there 
must  have  been  a  time  when  what  is  now  so  easy  as 
to  be  done  without  conscious*  effort  of  the  brain  was 
only  done  by  means  of  brain  work  which  was  very 
keenly  perceived,  even  to  fatigue  and  positive  distress. 
Even  now,  if  the  player  is  playing  something  the  like 
of  which  he  has  not  met  before,  we  observe  he  pauses 
and  becomes  immediately  conscious  of  attention. 

We  draw  the  inference,  therefore,  as  regards  piano- 
forte or  violin  playing,  that  the  more  the  familiarity  or 
knowledge  of  the  art,  the  less  is  there  consciousness  of 
such  knowledge;  even  so  far  as  that  there  should 


6  LIFE  AND  HABIT. 

suem  to  be  almost  as  much  difficulty  in  awakening 
consciousness  which  has  become,  so  to  speak,  latent, — 
a  consciousness  of  that  which  is  known  too  well  to 
admit  of  recognised  self- analysis  while  the  knowledge 
is  being  exercised — as  in  creating  a  consciousness  of 
that  which  is  not  yet  well  enough  known  to  be  properly 
designated  as  known  at  all.  On  the  other  hand,  we 
observe  that  the  less  the  familiarity  or  knowledge, 
the  greater  the  consciousness  of  whatever  knowledge 
there  is. 

Considering  other  like  instances  of  the  habitual 
exercise  of  intelligence  and  volition,  which,  from  long 
familiarity  with  the  method  of  procedure,  escape  the 
notice  of  the  person  exercising  them,  we  naturally 
think  of  writing.  The  formation  of  each  letter 
requires  attention  and  volition,  yet  in  a  few  minutes 
a  practised  writer  will  form  several  hundred  letters, 
and  be  able  to  think  and  talk  of  something  else  all  the 
time  he  is  doing  so.  He  will  not  probably  remember 
the  formation  of  a  single  character  in  any  page  that 
he  has  written ;  nor  will  he  be  able  to  give  more  than 
the  substance  of  his  writing  if  asked  to  do  so.  He 
knows  how  to  form  each  letter  so  well,  and  he  knows 
so  well  each  word  that  he  is  about  to  write,  that  he 
has  ceased  to  be  conscious  of  his  knowledge  or  to 
notice  his  acts  of  volition,  each  one  of  which  is,  never- 
theless, followed  by  a  corresponding  muscular  action. 
Yet  the  uniformity  of  our  handwriting,  and  the  manner 
in  which  we  almost  invariably  adhere  to  one  method 
of  forming  the  same  character,  would  seem  to  suggest 
that  during  the  momentary  formation  of  each  letter 


ON  CERTAIN  ACQUIRED  HABITS.  7 

our  memories  must  revert  (with  an  intensity  too  rapid 
for  our  perception)  to  many  if  not  to  all  the  occasions 
on  which  we  have  ever  written  the  same  letter  pre- 
viously— the  memory  of  these  occasions  dwelling  in  our 
minds  as  what  has  been  called  a  residuum — an  un- 
consciously struck  balance  or  average  of  them  all — 
a  fused  mass  of  individual  reminiscences  of  which  no 
trace  can  Le  found  in  our  consciousness,  and  of  which 
the  only  effect  would  seem  to  lie  in  the  gradual 
changes  of  handwriting  which  are  perceptible  in  most 
people  till  they  have  reached  middle-age,  and  some- 
times even  later.  So  far  are  we  from  consciously  re- 
membering any  one  of  the  occasions  on  which  we  have 
written  such  and  such  a  letter,  that  we  are  not  even 
conscious  of  exercising  our  memory  at  all,  any  more 
than  we  are  in  health  conscious  of  the  action  of  our 
heart.  But,  if  we  are  writing  in  some  unfamiliar  way, 
as  when  printing  our  letters  instead  of  writing  them 
in  our  usual  running  hand,  our  memory  is  so  far 
awakened  that  we  become  conscious  of  every  character 
we  form ;  sometimes  it  is  even  perceptible  as  memory 
to  ourselves,  as  when  we  try  to  remember  how  to 
print  some  letter,  for  example  a  g,  and  cannot  call  to 
mind  on  which  side  of  the  upper  half  of  the  letter  we 
ought  to  put  the  link  which  connects  it  with  the 
lower,  and  are  successful  in  remembering  ;  but  if  we 
become  very  conscious  of  remembering,  it  shows  that 
we  are  on  the  brink  of  only  trying  to  remember, — 
that  is  to  say,  of  not  remembering  at  all. 

As  a  general  rule,  we  remember  for  a  time  the  sub- 
stance  of  what  we  have  written,  for  the  subject  is 

B 


8  LIFE  AND  HABIT. 

generally  new  to  us ;  but  if  we  are  writing  what  we 
have  often  written  before,  we  lose  consciousness  of 
this  too,  as  fully  as  we  do  of  the  characters  necessary 
to  convey  the  substance  to  another  person,  and  we 
shall  find  ourselves  writing  on  as  it  were  mechanically 
wliile  thinking  and  talking  of  something  else.  So  a 
paid  copyist,  to  whom  the  subject  of  what  he  is  writing 
is  of  no  importance,  does  not  even  notice  it.  He 
deals  only  with  familiar  words  and  familiar  characters 
without  caring  to  go  behind  them,  and  thereupon 
writes  on  in  a  jz&m-unconscious  manner ;  but  if  he 
comes  to  a  word  or  to  characters  with  which  he  is  but 
little  acquainted,  he  becomes  immediately  awakened 
to  the  consciousness  of  either  remembering  or  trying 
to  remember.  His  consciousness  of  his  own  know- 
ledge or  memory  would  seem  to  belong  to  a  period,  so 
to  speak,  of  twilight  between  the  thick  darkness  of 
ignorance  and  the  brilliancy  of  perfect  knowledge ;  as 
colour  which  vanishes  with  extremes  of  light  or  of 
shade.  Perfect  ignorance  and  perfect  knowledge  are 
alike  unselfconscious. 

The  above  holds  good  even  more  noticeably  in 
respect  of  reading.  How  many  thousands  of  indi- 
vidual letters  do  our  eyes  run  over  every  morning  in 
the  "Times"  newspaper,  how  few  of  them  do  we 
notice,  or  remember  having  noticed  ?  Yet  there  was  a 
time  when  we  had  such  difficulty  in  reading  even  the 
simplest  words,  that  we  had  to  take  great  pains  to 
impress  them  upon  our  memory  so  as  to  know  them 
when  we  came  to  them  again.  Now,  not  even  a  single 
word  of  all  we  have  seen  will  remain  with  us,  unless 


ON  CERTAIN  ACQUIRED  HABITS.  9 

it  is  a  new  one,  or  an  old  one  used  in  an  unfamiliar 
sense,  in  which  case  we  notice,  and  may  very  likely 
remember  it.  Our  memory  retains  the  substance  only, 
the  substance  only  being  unfamiliar.  Nevertheless, 
although  we  do  not  perceive  more  than  the  general 
result  of  our  perception,  there  can  be  no  doubt  of  our 
having  perceived  every  letter  in  every  word  that 
we  have  read  at  all,  for  if  we  come  upon  a  word 
misspelt  our  attention  is  at  once  aroused;  unless, 
indeed,  we  have  actually  corrected  the  misspelling,  as 
well  as  noticed  it,  unconsciously,  through  exceeding 
familiarity  with  the  way  in  which  it  ought  to  be 
spelt.  Not  only  do  we  perceive  the  letters  we  have 
seen  without  noticing  that  we  have  perceived  them,  but 
we  find  it  almost  impossible  to  notice  that  we  notice 
them  when  we  have  once  learnt  to  read  fluently.  To 
try  to  do  so  puts  us  out,  and  prevents  our  being  able 
to  read.  We  may  even  go  so  far  as  to  say  that  if  a 
man  can  attend  to  the  individual  characters,  it  is  a 
sign  that  he  cannot  yet  read  fluently.  If  we  know 
how  to  read  well,  we  are  as  unconscious  of  the  means 
and  processes  whereby  we  attain  the  desired  result  as 
we  are  about  the  growth  of  our  hair  or  the  circulation 
of  our  blood.  So  that  here  again  it  would  seem  that 
we  only  know  what  we  know  still  to  some  extent 
imperfectly,  and  that  what  we  know  thoroughly 
escapes  our  conscious  perception  though  none  the  less 
actually  perceived.  Our  perception  in  fact  passes  into 
a  latent  stage,  as  also  our  memory  and  volition. 

Walking  is  another  example  of  the  rapid  exercise  of 
volition  with  but  little  perception  of  each  individual 


io  LIFE  AND  HABIT. 

act  of  exercise.  We  notice  any  obstacle  in  our  path, 
but  it  is  plain  we  do  not  notice  that  we  perceive 
much  that  we  have  nevertheless  been  perceiving ;  for 
if  a  man  goes  down  a  lane  by  night  he  will  stumble  over 
many  things  which  he  would  have  avoided  by  day,  al- 
though he  would  not  have  noticed  them.  Yet  time  was 
when  walking  was  to  each  one  of  us  a  new  and  arduous 
task — as  arduous  as  we  should  now  find  it  to  wheel  a 
wheelbarrow  on  a  tight-rope ;  whereas,  at  present, 
though  we  can  think  of  our  steps  to  a  certain  extent 
without  checking  our  power  to  walk,  we  certainly  can- 
not consider  our  muscular  action  in  detail  without 
having  to  come  to  a  dead  stop. 

Talking — especially  in  one's  mother  tongue — may 
serve  as  a  last  example.  We  find  it  impossible  to 
follow  the  muscular  action  of  the  mouth  and  tongue 
in  framing  every  letter  or  syllable  we  utter.  We  have 
probably  spoken  for  years  and  years  before  we  became 
aware  that  the  letter  b  is  a  labial  sound,  and  until  we 
have  to  utter  a  word  which  is  difficult  from  its  un- 
familiarity  we  speak  "  trippingly  on  the  tongue  "  with 
no  attention  except  to  the  substance  of  what  we 
wish  to  say.  Yet  talking  was  not  always  the  easy 
matter  to  us  which  it  is  at  present — as  we  perceive 
more  readily  when  we  are  learning  a  new  language 
which  it  may  take  us  months  to  master.  Nevertheless, 
when  we  have  once  mastered  it  we  speak  it  without 
further  consciousness  of  knowledge  or  memory,  as 
regards  the  more  common  words,  and  without  even 
noticing  our  unconsciousness.  Here,  as  in  the  other 
instances  already  given,  as  long  as  we  did  not  know 


ON  CER TAIN  A  CQ UIRED  HABITS.  1 1 

perfectly,  we  were  conscious  of  our  acts  of  perception, 
volition,  and  reflection,  but  when  our  knowledge  has 
become  perfect  we  no  longer  notice  our  consciousness, 
nor  our  volition ;  nor  can  we  awaken  a  second  artificial 
consciousness  without  some  effort,  and  disturbance  of 
the  process  of  which  we  are  endeavouring  to  become 
conscious.  We  are  no  longer,  so  to  speak,  under  the 
law,  but  under  grace. 

An  ascending  scale  may  be  perceived  in  the  above 
instances. 

In  playing,  we  have  an  action  acquired  long  after 
birth,  difficult  of  acquisition,  and  never  thoroughly 
familiarised  to  the  power  of  absolutely  unconscious 
performance,  except  in  the  case  of  those  who  have 
either  an  exceptional  genius  for  music,  or  who  have 
devoted  the  greater  part  of  their  time  to  practising. 
Except  in  the  case  of  these  persons  it  is  generally 
found  easy  to  become  more  or  less  conscious  of  any 
passage  without  disturbing  the  performance,  and  our 
action  remains  so  completely  within  our  control  that 
we  can  stop  playing  at  any  moment  we  please. 

In  writing,  we  have  an  action  generally  acquired 
earlier,  done  for  the  most  part  with  great  unconscious- 
ness of  detail,  fairly  well  within  our  control  to  stop  at 
any  moment;  though  not  so  completely  as  would  be 
imagined  by  those  who  have  not  made  the  experiment 
of  trying  to  stop  in  the  middle  of  a  given  character 
when  writing  at  full  speed.  Also,  we  can  notice  our 
formation  of  any  individual  character  without  our 
writing  being  materially  hindered. 

Reading  is  usually  acquired  earlier  still.     We  read 


12  LIFE  AND  HABIT. 

with  more  unconsciousness  of  attention  than  we  write. 
We  find  it  more  difficult  to  become  conscious  of  any 
character  without  discomfiture,  and  we  cannot  arrest 
ourselves  in  the  middle  of  a  word,  for  example,  and 
hardly  before  the  end  of  a  sentence ;  nevertheless  it  is 
on  the  whole  well  within  our  control. 

Walking  is  so  early  an  acquisition  that  we  cannot 
remember  having  acquired  it.  In  running  fast  over 
average  ground  we  find  it  very  difficult  to  become 
conscious  of  each  individual  step,  and  should  possibly 
find  it  more  difficult  still,  if  the  inequalities  and 
roughness  of  uncultured  land  had  not  perhaps  caused 
the  development  of  a  power  to  create  a  second  con- 
sciousness of  our  steps  without  hindrance  to  our 
running  or  walking.  Pursuit  and  flight,  whether  in  the 
chase  or  in  war,  must  for  many  generations  have  played 
a  much  more  prominent  part  in  the  lives  of  our  ancestors 
than  they  do  in  our  own.  If  the  ground  over  which 
they  had  to  travel  bad  been  generally  as  free  from 
obstruction  as  our  modern  cultivated  lands,  it  is  pos- 
sible that  we  might  not  find  it  as  easy  to  notice  our 
several  steps  as  we  do  at  present.  Even  as  it  is, 
if  while  we  are  running  we  would  consider  the  action 
of  our  muscles,  we  come  to  a  dead  stop,  and  should 
probably  fall  if  we  tried  to  observe  too  suddenly ;  for 
we  must  stop  to  do  this,  and  running,  when  we 
have  once  committed  ourselves  to  it  beyond  a  certain 
point,  is  not  controllable  to  a  step  or  two  without  loss 
of  equilibrium. 

We  learn  to  talk,  much  about  the  same  time  that  we 
learn  to  walk,  but  talking  requires  less  muscular  effort 


ON  CERTAIN  A  CQ  UIRED  HABITS.  1 3 

than  walking,  and  makes  generally  less  demand  upon 
our  powers.  A  man  may  talk  a  long  while  before  he 
has  done  the  equivalent  of  a  five-mile  walk ;  it  is 
natural,  therefore,  that  we  should  have  had  more  prac- 
tice in  talking  than  in  walking,  and  hence  that  we 
should  find  it  harder  to  pay  attention  to  our  words 
than  to  our  steps.  Certainly  it  is  very  hard  to  become 
conscious  of  every  syllable  or  indeed  of  every  word  we 
say;  the  attempt  to  do  so  will  often  bring  us  to  a 
check  at  once ;  nevertheless  we  can  generally  stop 
talking  if  we  wish  to  do  so,  unless  the  crying  of 
infants  be  considered  as  a  kind  of  quasi-speech  :  this 
comes  earlier,  and  is  often  quite  uncontrollable,  or 
more  truly  perhaps  is  done  with  such  complete  control 
over  the  muscles  by  the  will,  and  with  such  absolute 
certainty  of  his  own  purpose  on  the  part  of  the  wilier, 
that  there  is  no  longer  any  more  doubt,  uncertainty,  or 
suspense,  and  hence  no  power  of  perceiving  any  of  the 
processes  whereby  the  result  is  attained — as  a  wheel 
which  may  look  fast  fixed  because  it  is  so  fast  re- 
volving.1 

We  may  observe  therefore  in  this  ascending  scale, 
imperfect  as  it  is,  that  the  older  the  habit  the  longer 
the  practice,  the  longer  the  practice  the  more  know- 
ledge— or,  the  less  uncertainty;  the  less  uncertainty 
the  less  power  of  conscious  self-analysis  and  control. 

It  will  occur  to  the  reader  that  in  all  the  instances 
given  above,  different  individuals  attain  the  unconscious 
stage  of  perfect  knowledge  with  very  different  degrees 
of  facility.  Some  have  to  attain  it  with  a  great  sum  ; 
others  are  free  born.  Some  learn  to  play,  to  read,  write, 

1  See  Appendix. 


I4  LIFE  AND  HABIT. 

and  talk,  with  hardly  an  effort — some  show  such  an 
instinctive  aptitude  for  arithmetic  that,  like  Zerah  Col- 
burn,  at  eight  years  old,  they  achieve  results  without 
instruction,  which  in  the  case  of  most  people  would 
require  a  long  education.  The  account  of  Zerah  Col- 
burn,  as  quoted  from  Mr.  Baily  in  Dr.  Carpenter's 
"  Mental  Physiology,"  may  perhaps  be  given  here. 

"  He  raised  any  number  consisting  of  one  figure  pro- 
gressively to  the  tenth  power,  giving  the  results  (by 
actual  multiplication  and  not  by  memory)  faster  than 
they  coidd  be  set  down  in  figures  by  the  person  appointed 
to  record  them.  He  raised  the  number  8  progressively 
to  the  sixteenth  power,  and  in  naming  the  last  result, 
which  consisted  of  1 5  figures,  he  was  right  in  every 
one.  Some  numbers  consisting  of  two  figures  he  raised 
as  high  as  the  eighth  power,  though  he  found  a  diffi- 
culty in  proceeding  when  the  products  became  very 
large. 

"On  being  asked  the  square  root  of  106,929,  he 
answered  327  before  the  original  number  could  be 
written  down.  He  was  then  required  to  find  the  cube 
root  of  268,336,125,  and  with  equal  facility  and 
promptness  he  replied  645. 

"He  was  asked  how  many  minutes  there  are  in  48 
years,  and  before  the  question  could  be  taken  down  he 
replied  25,228,800,  and  immediately  afterwards  he 
gave  the  correct  number  of  seconds. 

"On  being  requested  to  give  the  factors  which  would 
produce  the  number  247,483,  he  immediately  named 
941  and  263,  which  are  the  only  two  numbers  from 
the  multiplication  of  which  it  would  result.  On 


ON  CERTAIN  ACQUIRED  HABITS.  15 

171, 395  being  proposed,  he  named  5  x  34,279, 
7x24,485,  59x2905,  83x2065,  35X4897, 
295  x  581,  and  413  x  415. 

"He  was  then  asked  to  give  the  factors  of  36,083, 
but  he  immediately  replied  that  it  had  none,  which  was 
really  the  case,  this  being  a  prime  number.  Other 
numbers  being  proposed  to  him  indiscriminately,  he 
always  succeeded  in  giving  the  correct  factors  except 
in  the  case  of  prime  numbers,  which  he  generally  dis- 
covered almost  as  soon  as  they  were  proposed  to  him. 
The  number  4,294,967,297,  which  is  233  -f  I,  having 
been  given  him,  he  discovered,  as  Euler  had  previously 
done,  that  it  was  not  the  prime  number  which  Fermat 
had  supposed  it  to  be,  but  that  it  is  the  product  of  the 
factors  6,700,417  X  641.  The  solution  of  this 
problem  was  only  given  after  the  lapse  of  some  weeks, 
but  the  method  he  took  to  obtain  it  clearly  showed 
that  he  had  not  derived  his  information  from  any 
extraneous  source. 

"  When  he  was  asked  to  multiply  together  numbers 
both  consisting  of  more  than  these  figures,  he  seemed 
to  decompose  one  or  both  of  them  into  its  factors,  and 
to  work  with  them  separately.  Thus,  on  being  asked 
to  give  the  square  of  4395,  he  multiplied  293  by 
itself,  and  then  twice  multiplied  the  product  by  15. 
And  on  being  asked  to  tell  the  square  of  999,999  he 
obtained  the  correct  result,  999,99 8,000,001,  by  twice 
multiplying  the  square  of  37,037  by  27.  He  then 
of  his  own  accord  multiplied  that  product  by  49,  and 
said  that  the  result  (viz.,  48,999,902,000,049)  was 
equal  to  the  square  of  6,999,993.  He  afterwards 


1 6  LIFE  AND  HABIT. 

multiplied  this  product  by  49,  and  observed  that  the 
result  (viz.,  2,400,995,198,002,401)  was  equal  to  the 
square  of  48,999,95  I.  He  was  again  asked  to  multi- 
ply the  product  by  25,  and  in  naming  the  result  (viz., 
60,024,879,950,060,025),  he  said  it  was  equal  to  the 
square  of  244,999,75  5. 

"  On  being  interrogated  as  to  the  manner  in  which  he 
obtained  these  results,  the  boy  constantly  said  he  did 
not  know  how  the  answers  came  into  his  mind.  In 
the  act  of  multiplying  two  numbers  together,  and  in 
the  raising  of  powers,  it  was  evident  (alike  from  the 
facts  just  stated  and  from  the  motion  of  his  lips)  that 
some  operation  was  going  forward  in  his  mind ;  yet 
that  operation  could  not  (from  the  readiness  with 
which  his  answers  were  furnished)  have  been  at  all 
allied  to  the  usual  modes  of  procedure,  of  which,  in- 
deed, he  was  entirely  ignorant,  not  being  able  to  per- 
form on  paper  a  simple  sum  in  multiplication  or 
division.  But  in  the  extraction  of  roots,  and  in  the 
discovery  of  the  factors  of  large  numbers,  it  did  not 
appear  that  any  operation  could  take  place,  since  he 
gave  answers  immediately,  or  in  a  very  few  seconds, 
which,  according  to  the  ordinary  methods,  would  have 
required  very  difficult  and  laborious  calculations,  and 
prime  numbers  cannot  be  recognised  as  such  by  any 
known  rule." 

I  should  hope  that  many  of  the  above  figures  are 
wrong.  I  have  verified  them  carefully  with  Dr.  Car- 
penter's quotation,  but  further  than  this  I  cannot  and 
will  not  go.  Also  I  am  happy  to  find  that  in  the  end 
the  boy  overcame  the  mathematics,  and  turned  out  a 


ON  CERTAIN  ACQUIRED  HABITS.  17 

useful  but  by  no  means  particularly  calculating  mem- 
ber of  society. 

The  case,  however,  is  typical  of  others  in  which  per- 
sons have  been  found  able  to  do  without  apparent  effort 
what  in  the  great  majority  of  cases  requires  a  long 
apprenticeship.  It  is  needless  to  multiply  instances ; 
the  point  that  concerns  us  is,  that  knowledge  under 
such  circumstances  being  very  intense,  and  the  ease  with 
which  the  result  is  produced  extreme,  it  eludes  the 
conscious  apprehension  of  the  performer  himself,  who 
only  becomes  conscious  when  a  difficulty  arises  which 
taxes  even  his  abnormal  power.  Such  a  case,  there- 
fore, confirms  rather  than  militates  against  our  opinion 
that  consciousness  of  knowledge  vanishes  on  the  know- 
ledge becoming  perfect — the  only  difference  between 
those  possessed  of  any  such  remarkable  special  power 
and  the  general  run  of  people  being,  that  the  first  are 
born  with  such  an  unusual  aptitude  for  their  particular 
specialty  that  they  are  able  to  dispense  with  all  or 
nearly  all  the  preliminary  exercise  of  their  faculty, 
while  the  latter  must  exercise  it  for  a  considerable 
time  before  they  can  get  it  to  work  smoothly  and 
easily;  but  in  either  case  when  once  the  knowledge  is 
intense  it  is  unconscious. 

Nor  again  would  such  an  instance  as  that  of  Zerah 
Colburn  warrant  us  in  believing  that  this  white  heat, 
as  it  were,  of  unconscious  knowledge  can  be  at- 
tained by  any  one  without  his  ever  having  been 
originally  cold.  Young  Colburn,  for  example,  could 
not  extract  roots  when  he  was  an  embryo  of  three 
weeks'  standing.  It  is  true  we  can  seldom  follow  the 


1 8  LIFE  AND  HABIT. 

process,  but  we  know  there  must  have  been  a  time 
in  every  case  when  even  the  desire  for  information  or 
action  had  not  been  kindled ;  the  forgetfulness  of 
effort  on  the  part  of  those  with  exceptional  genius  for 
a  special  subject  is  due  to  the  smallness  of  the  effort 
necessary,  so  that  it  makes  no  impression  upon  the 
individual  himself,  rather  than  to  the  absence  of  any 
effort  at  all1 

It  would,  therefore,  appear  as  though  perfect  know- 
ledge and  perfect  ignorance  were  extremes  which  meet 
and  become  indistinguishable  from  one  another;  so 
also  perfect  volition  and  perfect  absence  of  volition, 
perfect  memory  and  utter  forgetfulness ;  for  we  are 
unconscious  of  knowing,  willing,  or  remembering,  either 
from  not  yet  having  known  or  willed,  or  from  knowing 
and  willing  so  well  and  so  intensely  as  to  be  no  longer 
conscious  of  either.  Conscious  knowledge  and  volition 
are  of  attention ;  attention  is  of  suspense  ;  suspense  is 
of  doubt ;  doubt  is  of  uncertainty ;  uncertainty  is  of 
ignorance ;  so  that  the  mere  fact  of  conscious  knowing 
or  willing  implies  the  presence  of  more  or  less  novelty 
and  doubt. 

It  would  also  appear  as  a  general  principle  on  a 
superficial  view  of  the  foregoing  instances  (and  the 
reader  may  readily  supply  himself  with  others  which 
are  perhaps  more  to  the  purpose),  that  unconscious 
knowledge  and  unconscious  volition  are  never  acquired 
otherwise  than  as  the  result  of  experience,  familiarity, 
or  habit;  so  that  whenever  we  observe  a  person  able 
to  do  any  complicated  action  unconsciously,  we  may 
assume  both  that  he  must  have  done  it  very  often 

1  See  Appendix. 


ON  CER TAIN  A  CQ UIRED  HABITS.  1 9 

before  he  could  acquire  so  great  proficiency,  and  also 
that  there  must  have  been  a  time  when  he  did  not 
know  how  to  do  it  at  all. 

We  may  assume  that  there  was  a  time  when  he 
was  yet  so  nearly  on  the  point  of  neither  knowing  nor 
willing  perfectly,  that  he  was  quite  alive  to  whatever 
knowledge  or  volition  he  could  exert;  going  further 
back,  we  shall  find  him  still  more  keenly  alive  to  a 
less  perfect  knowledge ;  earlier  still,  we  find  him  well 
aware  that  he  does  not  know  nor  will  correctly,  but 
trying  hard  to  do  both  the  one  and  the  other ;  and  so 
on,  back  and  back,  till  both  difficulty  and  consciousness 
become  little  more  than  a  sound  of  going  in  the  brain, 
a  flitting  to  and  fro  of  something  barely  recognisable 
as  the  desire  to  will  or  know  at  all — much  less  as  the 
desire  to  know  or  will  definitely  this  or  that.  Finally, 
they  retreat  beyond  our  ken  into  the  repose — the  in- 
organic kingdom — of  as  yet  unawakened  interest. 

In  either  case, — the  repose  of  perfect  ignorance 
or  of  perfect  knowledge — disturbance  is  troublesome. 
When  first  starting  on  an  Atlantic  steamer,  our  rest 
is  hindered  by  the  screw;  after  a  short  time,  it  is 
hindered  if  the  screw  stops.  A  uniform  impression  is 
practically  no  impression.  One  cannot  either  learn  or 
unlearn  without  pains  or  pain. 


(  20  ) 


CHAPTER  II. 

CONSCIOUS  AND  UNCONSCIOUS  KNOWEES — THE  LA-W- 
AND GRACE. 

IN  this  chapter  we  shall  show  that  the  law,  which  we 
have  observed  to  hold  as  to  the  vanishing  tendency  of 
knowledge  upon  becoming  perfect,  holds  good  not  only 
concerning  acquired  actions  or  habits  of  body,  but  con- 
cerning opinions,  modes  of  thought,  and  mental  habits 
generally,  which  are  no  more  recognised  as  soon  as 
firmly  fixed,  than  are  the  steps  with  which  we  go  about 
our  daily  avocations.  I  am  aware  that  I  may  appear 
in  the  latter  part  of  the  chapter  to  have  wandered 
somewhat  beyond  the  limits  of  my  subject,  but,  on 
the  whole,  decide  upon  leaving  what  I  have  written, 
inasmuch  as  it  serves  to  show  how  far-reaching  is  the 
principle  on  which  I  am  insisting.  Having  said  so 
much,  I  shall  during  the  remainder  of  the  book  keep 
more  closely  to  the  point. 

Certain  it  is  that  we  know  best  what  we  are  least 
conscious  of  knowing,  or  at  any  rate  least  able  to  prove, 
as,  for  example,  our  own  existence,  or  that  there  is  a 
country  England.  If  any  one  asks  us  for  proof  on 
matters  of  this  sort,  we  have  none  ready,  and  are  justly 


CONSCIOUS  AND  UNCONSCIOUS  KNOWERS.    21 

annoyed  at  being  called  to  consider  what  we  regard  as 
settled  questions.  Again,  there  is  hardly  anything 
which  so  much  affects  our  actions  as  the  centre  of  the 
earth  (unless,  perhaps,  it  be  that  still  hotter  and  more 
unprofitable  spot  the  centre  of  the  universe),  for  we 
are  incessantly  trying  to  get  as  near  it  as  circum- 
stances will  allow,  or  to  avoid  getting  nearer  than  is 
for  the  time  being  convenient.  Walking,  running, 
standing,  sitting,  lying,  waking,  or  sleeping,  from  birth 
till  death  it  is  a  paramount  object  with  us  ;  even  after 
death — if  it  be  not  fanciful  to  say  so— it  is  one  of  the 
few  things  of  which  what  is  left  of  us  can  still  feel  the 
influence ;  yet  what  can  engross  less  of  our  attention 
than  this  dark  and  distant  spot  so  many  thousands  of 
miles  away  ? 

The  air  we  breathe,  so  long  as  it  is  neither  too  hot 
nor  cold,  nor  rough,  nor  full  of  smoke — that  is  to  say, 
so  long  as  it  is  in  that  state  with  which  we  are  best 
acquainted — seldom  enters  into  our  thoughts;  yet  there 
is  hardly  anything  with  which  we  are  more  incessantly 
occupied  night  and  day. 

Indeed,  it  is  not  too  much  to  say  that  we  have  no 
really  profound  knowledge  upon  any  subject — nc 
knowledge  on  the  strength  of  which  we  are  ready  to 
act  at  all  moments  unhesitatingly  without  either  pre- 
paration or  after-thought — till  we  have  left  off  feeling 
conscious  of  the  possession  of  such  knowledge,  and  of 
the  grounds  on  which  it  rests.  A  lesson  thoroughly 
learned  must  be  like  the  air  which  feels  so  light, 
though  pressing  so  heavily  against  us,  because  every 
pore  of  our  skin  is  saturated,  so  to  speak,  with  it  on 


2*  LIFE  AND  HABIT. 

all  sides  equally.  This  perfection  of  knowledge  some- 
times extends  to  positive  disbelief  in  the  thing  known, 
so  that  the  most  thorough  knower  shall  believe  him- 
self altogether  ignorant.  No  thief,  for  example,  is  such 
an  utter  thief — so  good  a  thief — as  the  kleptomaniac. 
Until  he  has  become  a  kleptomaniac,  and  can  steal  a 
horse  as  it  were  by  a  reflex  action,  he  is  still  but  half 
a  thief,  with  many  unthievish  notions  still  clinging  to 
him.  Yet  the  kleptomaniac  is  probably  unaware  that 
he  can  steal  at  all,  much  less  that  he  can  steal  so  well. 
He  would  be  shocked  if  he  were  to  know  the  truth. 
So  again,  no  man  is  a  great  hypocrite  until  he  has  left 
off  knowing  that  he  is  a  hypocrite.  The  great  hypo- 
crites of  the  world  are  almost  invariably  under  the 
impression  that  they  are  among  the  very  few  really 
honest  people  to  be  found ;  and,  as  we  must  all  have 
observed,  it  is  rare  to  find  any  one  strongly  under  this 
impression  without  ourselves  having  good  reason  to 
differ  from  him. 

Our  own  existence  is  another  case  in  point.  When 
we  have  once  become  articulately  conscious  of  existing, 
it  is  an  easy  matter  to  begin  doubting  whether  we 
exist  at  all.  As  long  as  man  was  too  unreflecting  a 
creature  to  articulate  in  words  his  consciousness  of  his 
own  existence,  he  knew  very  well  that  he  existed,  but 
he  did  not  know  that  he  knew  it.  With  introspection, 
and  the  perception  recognised,  for  better  or  worse, 
that  he  was  a  fact,  came  also  the  perception  that  he 
had  no  solid  ground  for  believing  that  he  was  a  fact  at 
all.  That  nice,  sensible,  unintrospective  people  who 
were  too  busy  trying  to  exist  pleasantly  to  trouble  their 


CONSCIOUS  AND  UNCONSCIOUS  KNOWERS.    23 

heads  as  to  whether  they  existed  or  no— that  this  best 
part  of  mankind  should  have  gratefully  caught  at  such 
a  straw  as  "  cog-ito  ergo  sum"  is  intelligible  enough. 
They  felt  the  futility  of  the  whole  question,  and  were 
thankful  to  one  who  seemed  to  clench  the  matter  with 
a  cant  catchword,  especially  with  a  catchword  in  a 
foreign  language  ;  but  how  one,  who  was  so  far  gone  as 
to  recognise  that  he  could  not  prove  his  own  existence, 
should  be  able  to  comfort  himself  with  such  a  begging 
of  the  question,  would  seem  unintelligible  except  upon 
the  ground  of  sheer  exhaustion. 

At  the  risk  of  appearing  to  wander  too  far  from  the 
matter  in  hand,  a  few  further  examples  may  perhaps 
be  given  of  that  irony  of  nature,  by  which  it  comes 
about  that  we  so  often  most  know  and  are,  what  we 
least  think  ourselves  to  know  and  be — and  on  the  other 
hand  hold  most  strongly  what  we  are  least  capable  of 
demonstrating. 

Take  the  existence  of  a  Personal  God, — one  of  the 
most  profoundly-received  and  widely-spread  ideas  that 
have  ever  prevailed  among  mankind.  Has  there  ever 
been  a  demonstration  of  the  existence  of  such  a  God  as 
has  satisfied  any  considerable  section  of  thinkers  for 
long  together  ?  Hardly  has  what  has  been  conceived 
to  be  a  demonstration  made  its  appearance  and  re- 
ceived a  certain  acceptance  as  though  it  were  actual 
proof,  when  it  has  been  impugned  with  sufficient 
success  to  show  that,  however  true  the  fact  itself,  the 
demonstration  is  naught.  I  do  not  say  that  this  is  an 
argument  against  the  personality  of  God;  the  drift, 
indeed,  of  the  present  reasoning  would  be  towards  an 


24  LIFE  AND  HABIT. 

opposite  conclusion,  inasmuch  as  it  insists  upon  the 
fact  that  what  is  most  true  and  best  known  is  often 
least  susceptible  of  demonstration,  owing  to  the  very 
perfectness  with  which  it  is  known ;  nevertheless,  the 
fact  remains  that  many  men  in  many  ages  and  countries 
— the  subtlest  thinkers  over  the  whole  world  for  some 
fifteen  hundred  years — have  hunted  for  a  demonstration 
of  God's  personal  existence ;  yet  though  so  many  have 
sought, — so  many,  and  so  able,  and  for  so  long  a  time 
— none  have  found.  There  is  no  demonstration  which 
can  be  pointed  to  with  any  unanimity  as  settling  the 
matter  beyond  power  of  reasonable  cavil.  On  the  con- 
trary, it  may  be  observed  that  from  the  attempt  to  prove 
the  existence  of  a  personal  God  to  the  denial  of  that 
existence  altogether,  the  path  is  easy.  As  in  the  case 
of  our  own  existence,  it  will  be  found  that  they  alone 
are  perfect  believers  in  a  personal  Deity  and  in  the 
Christian  religion  who  have  not  yet  begun  to  feel  that 
either  stands  in  need  of  demonstration.  We  observe 
that  most  people,  whether  Christians,  or  Jews,  or 
Mohammedans,  are  unable  to  give  their  reasons  for  the 
faith  that  is  in  them  with  any  readiness  or  complete- 
ness ;  and  this  is  sure  proof  that  they  really  hold  it 
so  utterly  as  to  have  no  further  sense  that  it  either 
can  be  demonstrated  or  ought  to  be  so,  but  feel 
towards  it  as  towards  the  air  which  they  breathe  but 
do  not  notice.  On  the  other  hand,  a  living  prelate  was 
reported  in  the  "  Times "  to  have  said  in  one  of  his 
latest  charges :  "  My  belief  is  that  a  widely  extended 
good  practice  must  be  founded  upon  Christian  doc- 
trine." The  fact  of  the  Archbishop's  recognising  this 


CONSCIOUS  AND  UNCONSCIOUS  KNOWERS.   25 

as  among  the  number  of  his  beliefs  is  conclusive  evi- 
dence with  those  who  have  devoted  attention  to  the 
laws  of  thought,  that  his  mind  is  not  yet  clear  as  to 
whether  or  no  there  is  any  connection  at  all  between 
Christian  doctrine  and  widely  extended  good  prac- 
tice.1 

Again,  it  has  been  often  and  very  truly  said  that  it  is 
not  the  conscious  and  self-styled  sceptic,  as  Shelley  for 
example,  who  is  the  true  unbeliever.  Such  a  man  as 
Shelley  will,  as  indeed  his  life  abundantly  proves,  have 
more  in  common  than  not  with  the  true  unself-con- 
scious  believer.  Gallio  again,  whose  indifference  to 
religious  animosities  has  won  him  the  cheapest  im- 
mortality which,  so  far  as  I  can  remember,  was  ever 
yet  won,  was  probably,  if  the  truth  were  known,  a. 
person  of  the  smcerest  piety.  It  is  the  unconscious 
unbeliever  who  is  the  true  infidel,  however  greatly 
he  would  be  surprised  to  know  the  truth.  Mr.  Spur- 
geon  was  reported  as  having  recently  asked  the 
Almighty  to  "  change  our  rulers  as  soon  as  possible." 
There  lurks  a  more  profound  distrust  of  God's  power 
in  these  words  than  in  almost  any  open  denial  of  His 
existence. 

So  it  rather  shocks  us  to  find  Mr.  Darwin  writing 
("  Plants  and  Animals  under  Domestication,"  vol.  ii., 
p.  275):  "No  doubt,  in  every  case  there  must  have 
been  some  exciting  cause."  And  again,  six  or  seven 
pages  later :  "  No  doubt,  each  slight  variation  must 
have  its  efficient  cause."  The  repetition  within  so 
short  a  space  of  this  expression  of  confidence  in  the 
impossibility  of  causeless  effects  would  suggest  that 

1  See  Appendix. 


26  LIFE  AND  HABIT. 

Mr.  Darwin's  mind  at  the  time  of  writing  was,  un- 
consciously to  himself,  in  a  state  of  more  or  less 
uneasiness  as  to  whether  effects  could  not  occasionally 
come  about  of  themselves,  and  without  cause  of  any  sort, 
— that  he  may  have  been  standing,  in  fact,  for  a  short 
time  upon  the  brink  of  a  denial  of  the  indestructibility 
of  force  and  matter. 

In  like  manner,  the  most  perfect  humour  and  irony 
is  generally  quite  unconscious.  Examples  of  both  are 
frequently  given  by  men  whom  the  world  considers  as 
deficient  in  humour;  it  is  more  probably  true  that 
these  persons  are  unconscious  of  their  own  delightful 
power  .through  the  very  mastery  and  perfection  with 
which  they  hold  it.  There  is  a  play,  for  instance,  of 
genuine  fun  in  some  of  the  more  serious  scientific 
and  theological  journals  which  for  some  time  past  we 
have  looked  for  in  vain  in  " ." 

The  following  extract,  from  a  journal  which  I  will 
not  advertise,  may  serve  as  an  example : 

"  Lycurgus,  when  they  had  abandoned  to  his  revenge 
him  who  had  put  out  his  eyes,  took  him  home,  and  the 
punishment  he  inflicted  upon  him  was  sedulous  in- 
structions to  virtue."  Yet  this  truly  comic  paper  does 
not  probably  know  that  it  is  comic,  any  more  than 
the  kleptomaniac  knows  that  he  steals,  or  than  John 
Milton  knew  he  was  a  humorist  when  he  wrote  a 
hymn  upon  the  circumcision,  and  spent  his  honeymoon 
in  composing  a  treatise  on  divorce.  No  more  again 
did  Goethe  know  how  exquisitely  humorous  he  was 
when  he  wrote,  in  his  "YYilhelm  Meister,  that  a  beauti- 
ful tear  glistened  in  Theresa's  right  eye,  and  then  went 


CONSCIOUS  AND  UNCONSCIOUS  KNOWERS.    27 

on  to  explain  that  it  glistened  in  her  right  eye  and  not 
in  her  left,  because  she  had  had  a  wart  on  her  left 
which  had  been  removed — and  successfully.  Goethe 
probably  wrote  this  without  a  chuckle ;  he  believed 
what  a  good  many  people  who  have  never  read  Wil- 
helni  Meister  believe  still,  namely,  that  it  was  a 
work  full  of  pathos,  of  fine  and  tender  feeling ;  yet  a 
less  consummate  humorist  must  have  felt  that  there 
was  scarcely  a  paragraph  in  it  from  first  to  last  the 
chief  merit  of  which  did  not  lie  in  its  absurdity. 

Another  example  may  be  taken  from  Bacon  of  the 
manner  in  which  sayings  which  drop  from  men  un- 
consciously, give  the  key  of  their  inner  thoughts  to 
another  person,  though  they  themselves  know  not 
that  they  have  such  thoughts  at  all;  much  less  that 
these  thoughts  are  their  only  true  convictions.  In  his 
Essay  on  Friendship  the  great  philosopher  writes : 
"  Reading  good  books  on  morality  is  a  little  flat  and 
dead."  Innocent,  not  to  say  pathetic,  as  this  passage 
may  sound  it  is  pregnant  with  painful  inferences  con- 
cerning Bacon's  moral  character.  For  if  he  knew  that 
he  found  reading  good  books  of  morality  a  little  flat 
and  dead,  it  follows  he  must  have  tried  to  read  them  ; 
nor  is  he  saved  by  the  fact  that  he  found  them  a  little 
flat  and  dead ;  for  though  this  does  indeed  show  that 
he  had  begun  to  be  so  familiar  with  a  few  first  princi- 
ples as  to  find  it  more  or  less  exhausting  to  have  his 
attention  directed  to  them  further — yet  his  words 
prove  that  they  were  not  so  incorporate  with  him 
that  he  should  feel  the  loathing  for  further  discourse 
upon  the  matter  which  honest  people  commonly  feel 


28  LIFE  AND  HABIT. 

now.  It  -will  be  remembered  that  he  took  bribes  when 
he  came  to  be  Lord  Chancellor. 

It  is  on  the  same  principle  that  we  find  it  so 
distasteful  to  hear  one  praise  another  for  earnestness. 
For  such  praise  raises  a  suspicion  in  our  minds  (pace 
the  late  Dr.  Arnold  and  his  following)  that  the 
praiser's  attention  must  have  been  arrested  by  sin- 
cerity, as  by  something  more  or  less  unfamiliar  to  him- 
self. So  universally  is  this  recognised  that  the  word  has 
for  some  time  been  discarded  entirely  by  all  reputable 
people.  Truly,  if  there  is  one  who  cannot  find  himself 
in  the  same  room  with  the  life  and  letters  of  an  earnest 
person  without  being  made  instantly  unwell,  the  same 
is  a  just  man  and  perfect  in  all  his  ways. 

But  enough  has  perhaps  been  said.  As  the  fish  in 
the  sea,  or  the  bird  in  the  air,  so  unreasouingly  and 
inarticulately  safe  must  a  man  feel  before  he  can  be 
said  to  know.  It  is  only  those  who  are  ignorant  and 
uncultivated  who  can  know  anything  at  all  in  a 
proper  sense  of  the  words.  Cultivation  will  breed  in 
any  man  a  certainty  of  the  uncertainty  even  of  his 
most  assured  convictions.  It  is  perhaps  fortunate  for 
our  comfort  that  we  can  none  of  us  be  cultivated  upon 
very  many  subjects,  so  that  considerable  scope  for 
assurance  will  still  remain  to  us;  but  however  this  may 
be,  we  certainly  observe  it  as  a  fact  that  the  greatest 
men  are  they  who  are  most  uncertain  in  spite  of 
certainty,  and  at  the  same  time  most  certain  in  spite 
of  uncertainty,  and  who  are  thus  best  able  to  feel  that 
there  is  nothing  in  such  complete  harmony  with  itself  as 
a  flat  contradiction  in  terms.  For  nature  hates  that  any 


CONSCIOUS  AND  UNCONSCIOUS  KNOWERS.    29 

principle  should  breed,  so  to  speak,  hermaphroditically, 
but  will  give  to  each  an  help  meet  for  it  which  shall 
cross  it  and  be  the  undoing  of  it ;  as  in  the  case  of 
descent  with  modification,  of  which  the  essence  would 
appear  to  be  that  every  offspring  should  resemble  its 
parents,  and  yet,  at  the  same  time,  that  no  offspring 
should  resemble  its  parents.  But  for  the  slightly  irri- 
tating stimulant  of  this  perpetual  crossing,  we  should 
pass  our  lives  unconsciously  as  though  in  slumber. 

Until  we  have  got  to  understand  that  though  black 
is  not  white,  yet  it  may  be  whiter  than  white  itself 
(and  any  painter  will  readily  paint  that  which  shall 
show  obviously  as  black,  yet  it  shall  be  whiter  than 
that  which  shall  show  no  less  obviously  as  white),  we 
may  be  good  logicians,  but  we  are  still  poor  reasoners. 
Knowledge  is  in  an  inchoate  state  as  long  as  it  is 
capable  of  logical  treatment;  it  must  be  transmuted 
into  that  sense  or  instinct  which  rises  altogether  above 
the  sphere  in  which  words  can  have  being  at  all,  other- 
wise it  is  not  yet  vital.  For  sense  is  to  knowledge 
what  conscience  is  to  reasoning  about  right  and  wrong; 
the  reasoning  must  be  so  rapid  as  to  defy  conscious 
reference  to  first  principles,  and  even  at  times  to  be 
apparently  subversive  of  them  altogether,  or  the  action 
will  halt.  It  must,  in  fact,  become  automatic  before 
we  are  safe  with  it.  While  we  are  fumbling  for  the 
grounds  of  our  conviction,  our  conviction  is  prone  to 
fall,  as  Peter  for  lack  of  faith  sinking  into  the  waves 
of  Galilee ;  so  that  the  very  power  to  prove  at  all  is 
an  a  priori  argument  against  the  truth — or  at  any 
rate  the  practical  importance  to  the  vast  majority  of 


30  LIFE  AND  HABIT. 

mankind — of  all  that  is  supported  by  demonstration. 
For  the  power  to  prove  implies  a  sense  of  the  need  of 
proof,  and  things  which  the  majority  of  mankind  find 
practically  important  are  in  ninety-nine  cases  out  of  a 
hundred  above  proof.  The  need  of  proof  becomes  as 
obsolete  in  the  case  of  assured  knowledge,  as  the  prac- 
tice of  fortifying  towns  in  the  middle  of  an  old  and  long 
settled  country.  Who  builds  defences  for  that  which 
is  impregnable  or  little  likely  to  be  assailed  ?  The 
answer  is  ready,  that  unless  the  defences  had  been 
built  in  former  times  it  would  be  impossible  to  do 
without  them  now ;  but  this  does  not  touch  the  argu- 
ment, which  is  not  that  demonstration  is  unwise,  but 
that  as  long  as  a  demonstration  is  still  felt  necessary, 
and  therefore  kept  ready  to  hand,  the  subject  of  such 
demonstration  is  not  yet  securely  known.  Qui  s'ex- 
cuse,  s*  accuse ;  and  unless  a  matter  can  hold  its  own 
without  the  brag  and  self-assertion  of  continual  demon- 
stration, it  is  still  more  or  less  of  a  parvenu,  which  we 
shall  not  lose  much  by  neglecting  till  it  has  less  occa- 
sion to  blow  its  own  trumpet.  The  only  alternative  is 
that  it  is  an  error  in  process  of  detection,  for  if  evi- 
dence concerning  any  opinion  has  long  been  deemed 
superfluous,  and  ever  after  this  comes  to  be  again  felt 
necessary,  we  know  that  the  opinion  is  doomed. 

If  there  is  any  truth  in  the  above,  it  should  follow 
that  our  conception  of  the  words  "  science "  and 
"  scientific  "  should  undergo  some  modification.  Not 
that  we  should  speak  slightingly  of  science,  but  that 
we  should  recognise  more  than  we  do,  that  there  are 
two  distinct  classes  of  scientific  people,  corresponding 


CONSCIOUS  AND  UNCONSCIOUS  KNOWERS.    31 

not  inaptly  with  the  two  main  parties  into  which  the 
political  world  is  divided.  The  one  class  is  deeply 
versed  in  those  sciences  which  have  already  become 
the  common  property  of  mankind ;  enjoying,  enforcing, 
perpetuating,  and  engraining  still  more  deeply  into  the 
mind  of  man  acquisitions  already  approved  by  common 
experience,  but  somewhat  careless  about  extension  of 
empire,  or  at  any  rate  disinclined,  for  the  most  part,  to 
active  effort  on  their  own  part  for  the  sake  of  such  ex- 
tension— neither  progressive,  in  fact,  nor  aggressive — 
but  quiet,  peaceable  people,  who  wish  to  live  and  let 
live,  as  their  fathers  before  them ;  while  the  other  class 
is  chiefly  intent  upon  pushing  forward  the  boundaries 
of  science,  and  is  comparatively  indifferent  to  what  is 
known  already  save  in  so  far  as  necessary  for  pur- 
poses of  extension.  These  last  are  called  pioneers  of 
science,  and  to  them  alone  is  the  title  "  scientific " 
commonly  accorded ;  but  pioneers,  important  to  an  army 
as  they  are,  are  still  not  the  army  itself,  which  can  get 
on  better  without  the  pioneers  than  the  pioneers  with- 
out the  army.  Surely  the  class  which  knows  thoroughly 
well  what  it  knows,  and  which  adjudicates  upon  the 
value  of  the  discoveries  made  by  the  pioneers — surely 
this  class  has  as  good  a  right  or  better  to  be  called 
scientific  than  the  pioneers  themselves. 

These  two  classes  above  described  blend  into  one 
another  with  every  shade  of  gradation.  Some  are  ad- 
mirably proficient  in  the  well-known  sciences — that  is 
to  say,  they  have  good  health,  good  looks,  good  temper, 
common  sense,  and  energy,  and  they  hold  all  these  good 
things  in  such  perfection  as  to  be  altogether  without 


32  LIFE  AND  HABIT. 

introspection — to  be  not  under  the  law,  but  so  utterly 
and  entirely  under  grace  that  every  one  who  sees  them 
likes  them.  But  such  may,  and  perhaps  more  commonly 
will,  have  very  little  inclination  to  extend  the  boundaries 
of  human  knowledge ;  their  aim  is  in  another  direction 
altogether.  Of  the  pioneers,  on  the  other  hand,  some 
are  agreeable  people,  well  versed  in  the  older  sciences, 
though  still  more  eminent  as  pioneers,  while  others, 
whose  services  in  this  last  capacity  have  been  of  in- 
estimable value,  are  noticeably  ignorant  of  the  sciences 
wliich  have  already  become  current  with  the  larger  part 
of  mankind — in  other  words,  they  are  ugly,  rude,  and 
disagreeable  people,  very  progressive,  it  may  be,  but 
very  aggressive  to  boot. 

The  main  difference  between  these  two  classes  lies 
in  the  fact  that  the  knowledge  of  the  one,  so  far  as 
it  is  new,  is  known  consciously,  while  that  of  the 
other  is  unconscious,  consisting  of  sense  and  instinct 
rather  than  of  recognised  knowledge.  So  long  as  a  man 
has  these,  and  of  the  same  kind  as  the  more  powerful 
body  of  his  fellow-countrymen,  he  is  a  true  man  of 
science,  though  he  can  hardly  read  or  write.  As  my 
great  namesake  said  so  well,  "  He  knows  what's  what, 
and  that's  as  high  as  metaphysic  wit  can  fly."  As  usual, 
these  true  and  thorough  knowers  do  not  know  that 
they  are  scientific,  and  can  seldom  give  a  reason  for  the 
faith  that  is  in  them.  They  believe  themselves  to  be 
ignorant,  uncultured  men,  nor  can  even  the  professors 
whom  they  sometimes  outwit  in  their  own  professorial 
domain  perceive  that  they  have  been  outwitted  by  men 
of  superior  scientific  attainments  to  their  own.  The 


CONSCIOUS  AND  UNCONSCIOUS  KNOWERS.    33 

following  passage  from  Dr.  Carpenter's  "Mesmerism, 
Spiritualism,"  &c.,  may  serve  as  an  illustration  : — 

"  It  is  well  known  that  persons  who  are  conversant 
with  the  geological  structure  of  a  district  are  often  able 
to  indicate  with  considerable  certainty  in  what  spot 
and  at  what  depth  wrater  will  be  found ;  and  men  of 
less  scientific  knoivledge,  but  of  considerable  practical  ex- 
perience " — (so  that  in  Dr.  Carpenter's  mind  there 
seems  to  be  some  sort  of  contrast  or  difference  in  kind 
between  the  knowledge  which  is  derived  from  obser- 
vation of  facts  and  scientific  knowledge) — "  frequently 
arrive  at  a  true  conclusion  upon  this  point  without 
being  able  to  assign  reasons  for  their  opinions. 

"  Exactly  the  same  may  be  said  in  regard  to  the 
mineral  structure  of  a  mining  district ;  the  course  of  a 
metallic  vein  being  often  correctly  indicated  by  the 
shrewd  guess  of  an  observant  workman,  when  the 
scientific  reasoning  of  the  mining  engineer  altogether 
fails." 

Precisely.  Here  W3  have  exactly  the  kind  of  thing 
we  are  in  search  of:  the  man  who  has  observed  and 
observed  till  the  facts  are  so  thoroughly  in  his  head 
that  through  familiarity  he  has  lost  sight  both  of  them 
and  of  the  processes  whereby  he  deduced  his  conclu- 
sions from  them — is  apparently  not  considered  scientific, 
though  he  knows  how  to  solve  the  problem  before  him ; 
the  mining  engineer,  on  the  other  hand,  who  reasons 
scientifically — that  is  to  say,  with  a  knowledge  of  his 
own  knowledge — is  found  not  to  know,  and  to  fail  in 
discovering  the  mineral. 

"  It  is  an  experience  we  are  continually  encounter- 


34  L1PE  AND  HABIT. 

ing  in  other  walks  of  life,"  continues  Dr.  Carpenter, 
"  that  particular  persons  are  guided — some  apparently 
by  an  original  and  others  by  an  acquired  intuition — 
to  conclusions  for  which  they  can  give  no  adequate 
reason,  but  which  subsequent  events  prove  to  have 
been  correct."  And  this,  I  take  it,  implies  what  I  have 
been  above  insisting  on,  namely,  that  on  becoming  in- 
tense, knowledge  seems  also  to  become  unaware  of  the 
grounds  on  which  it  rests,  or  that  it  has  or  requires 
grounds  at  all,  or  indeed  even  exists.  The  only  issue 
between  myself  and  Dr.  Carpenter  would  appear  to  be, 
that  Dr.  Carpenter,  himself  an  acknowledged  leader  in 
the  scientific  world,  restricts  the  term  "  scientific  "  to  the 
people  who  know  that  they  know,  but  are  beaten  by 
those  who  are  not  so  conscious  of  their  own  knowledge ; 
while  I  say  that  the  term  "  scientific  "  should  be  applied 
(only  that  they  would  not  like  it)  to  the  nice  sensible 
people  who  know  what's  what  rather  than  to  the  dis- 
covering class. 

And  this  is  easily  understood  when  we  remember 
that  the  pioneer  cannot  hope  to  acquire  any  of  the 
new  sciences  in  a  single  lifetime  so  perfectly  as  to  be- 
come unaware  of  his  own  knowledge.  As  a  general 
rule,  we  observe  him  to  be  still  in  a  state  of  active 
consciousness  concerning  whatever  particular  science 
he  is  extending,  and  as  long  as  he  is  in  this  state 
he  cannot  know  utterly.  It  is,  as  I  have  already  so 
often  insisted  on,  those  who  do  not  know  that  they 
know  so  much  who  have  the  firmest  grip  of  their 
knowledge  :  the  best  class,  for  example,  of  our  English 
youth,  who  live  much  in  the  open  air,  and,  as  Lord 


CONSCIOUS  AND  UNCONSCIOUS  KNOWERS.    35 

Beaconsfield  finely  said,  never  read.  These  are  the 
people  who  know  best  those  things  which  are  best 
worth  knowing — that  is  to  say,  they  are  the  most  truly 
scientific.  Unfortunately,  the  apparatus  necessary  for 
this  kind  of  science  is  so  costly  as  to  be  within  the 
reach  of  few,  involving,  as  it  does,  an  experience  in  the 
use  of  it  for  some  preceding  generations.  Even  those 
who  are  born  with  the  means  within  their  reach  must 
take  no  less  pains,  and  exercise  no  less  self-control, 
before  they  can  attain  the  perfect  unconscious  use  of 
them,  than  would  go  to  the  making  of  a  James  Watt 
or  a  Stephenson ;  it  is  vain,  therefore,  to  hope  that  this 
best  kind  of  science  can  ever  be  put  within  the  reach 
of  the  many ;  nevertheless  it  may  be  safely  said  that 
all  the  other  and  more  generally  recognised  kinds  of 
science  are  valueless  except  in  so  far  as  they  tend  to 
minister  to  this  the  highest  kind.  They  have  no 
raison  d'etre  except  so  far  as  they  tend  to  do  away 
with  the  necessity  for  work,  and  to  diffuse  good  health, 
and  that  good  sense  which  is  above  self-consciousness. 
They  are  to  be  encouraged  because  they  have  rendered 
the  most  fortunate  kind  of  modem  European  possible, 
and  because  they  tend  to  make  possible  a  still  more 
fortunate  kind  than  any  now  existing.  But  the  man 
who  devotes  himself  to  science  cannot — with  the  rarest, 
if  any,  exceptions — belong  to  this  most  fortunate  class 
himself.  He  occupies  a  lower  place,  both  scientifically 
and  morally,  for  it  is  not  possible  but  that  liis  drudgery 
should  somewhat  soil  him  both  in  mind  and  health  of 
body,  or,  if  this  be  denied,  surely  it  must  let  him  and 
hinder  him  in  running  the  race  for  unconsciousness. 


36  LIBE  AND  HABIT. 

We  do  not  feel  that  it  increases  the  glory  of  a  king 
or  great  nobleman  that  he  should  excel  in  what  is 
commonly  called  science.  Certainly  he  should  not  go 
further  than  Prince  Rupert's  drops.  Nor  should  he 
excel  in  music,  art,  literature,  or  theology — all  which 
things  are  more  or  less  parts  of  science.  He  should  be 
above  them  all,  save  in  so  far  as  he  can  -without  effort 
reap  renown  from  the  labours  of  others.  It  is  a  Idche 
in  him  that  he  should  write  music  or  books,  or  paint 
pictures  at  all ;  but  if  he  must  do  so,  his  work  should 
be  at  best  contemptible.  Much  as  we  must  condemn 
Marcus  Aurelius,  we  condemn  James  I.  even  more 
severely. 

It  is  a  pity  there  should  exist  so  general  a  confusion 
of  thought  upon  this  subject,  for  it  may  be  asserted 
without  fear  of  contradiction  that  there  is  hardly  any 
form  of  immorality  now  rife  which  produces  more  dis- 
astrous effects  upon  those  who  give  themselves  up  to  it, 
and  upon  society  in  general,  than  the  so-called  science  of 
those  who  know  that  they  know  too  well  to  be  able  to 
know  truly.  With  very  clever  people — the  people 
who  know  that  they  know — it  is  much  as  with  the 
members  of  the  early  Corinthian  Church,  to  whom  St. 
Paul  wrote,  that  if  they  looked  their  numbers  over, 
they  would  not  find  many  wise,  nor  powerful,  nor  well- 
born people  among  them.  Dog-fanciers  tell  us  that 
performing  dogs  never  carry  their  tails ;  such  dogs  have 
eaten  of  the  tree  of  knowledge,  and  are  convinced  of 
sin  accordingly — they  know  that  they  know  things,  in 
respect  of  which,  therefore,  they  are  no  longer  under 
grace,  but  under  the  law,  and  they  have  yet  so  much 


CONSCIOUS  AND  UNCONSCIOUS  KNOWERS.    37 

grace  left  as  to  be  ashamed.  So  with  the  human 
clever  dog ;  he  may  speak  with  the  tongues  of  men 
and  angels,  but  so  long  as  he  knows  that  he  knows,  his 
tail  will  droop.  More  especially  does  this  hold  in 
the  case  of  those  who  are  born  to  wealth  and  of  old 
family.  We  must  all  feel  that  a  rich  young  nobleman 
with  a  taste  for  science  and  principles  is  rarely  a  plea- 
sant object.  We  do  not  even  like  the  rich  young  man 
in  the  Bible  who  wanted  to  inherit  eternal  life,  unless, 
indeed,  he  merely  wanted  to  know  whether  there  was 
not  some  way  by  which  he  could  avoid  dying,  and 
even  so  he  is  hardly  worth  considering.  Principles 
are  like  logic,  which  never  yet  made  a  good  reasoner  of 
a  bad  one,  but  might  still  be  occasionally  useful  if  they 
did  not  invariably  contradict  each  other  whenever  there 
is  any  temptation  to  appeal  to  them.  They  are  like 
fire,  good  servants  but  bad  masters.  As  many  people  or 
more  have  been  wrecked  on  principle  as  from  want  of 
principle.  They  are,  as  their  name  implies,  of  an 
elementary  character,  suitable  for  beginners  only,  and 
he  who  has  so  little  mastered  them  as  to  have  occasion 
to  refer  to  them  consciously,  is  out  of  place  in  the 
society  of  well-educated  people.  The  truly  scientific 
invariably  hate  him,  and,  for  the  most  part,  the  more 
profoundly  in  proportion  to  the  unconsciousness  with 
which  they  do  so. 

If  the  reader  hesitates,  let  him  go  down  into  the 
streets  and  look  in  the  shop-windows  at  the  photo- 
graphs of  eminent  men,  whether  literary,  artistic,  or 
scientific,  and  note  the  work  which  the  consciousness 
of  knowledge  has  wrought  on  nine  out  of  every  ten  of 


38  LIFE  AND  HABIT. 

them ;  then  let  him  go  to  the  masterpieces  of  Greek  and 
Italian  art,  the  truest  preachers  of  the  truest  gospel  of 
grace ;  let  him  look  at  the  Venus  of  Milo,  the  Discobo- 
lus, the  St.  George  of  Donatello.  If  it  had  pleased 
these  people  to  wish  to  study,  there  was  no  lack  of 
brains  to  do  it  with ;  but  imagine  "  what  a  deal  of 
scorn "  would  "  look  beautiful "  upon  the  Venus  of 
Milo's  face  if  it  were  suggested  to  her  that  she  should 
learn  to  read.  Which,  think  you,  knows  most,  the 
Theseus,  or  any  modem  professor  taken  at  random  ? 
True,  the  advancement  of  learning  must  have  had  a 
great  share  in  the  advancement  of  beauty,  inasmuch 
as  beauty  is  but  knowledge  perfected  and  incarnate — 
but  with  the  pioneers  it  is  sic  vos  non  vdbis  ;  the  grace 
is  not  for  them,  but  for  those  who  come  after.  Science 
is  like  offences.  It  must  needs  come,  but  woe  unto 
that  man  through  whom  it  comes ;  for  there  cannot  be 
much  beauty  where  there  is  consciousness  of  know- 
ledge, and  while  knowledge  is  still  new  it  must  in  the 
nature  of  things  involve  much  consciousness. 

It  is  not  knowledge,  then,  that  is  incompatible  with 
beauty ;  there  cannot  be  too  much  knowledge,  but  it 
must  have  passed  through  many  people  who  it  is  to  be 
feared  must  be  more  or  less  disagreeable,  before  beauty 
or  grace  will  have  anything  to  say  to  it ;  it  must 
be  so  incarnate  in  a  man's  whole  being  that  he  shall 
not  be  aware  of  it,  or  it  will  fit  him  constrainedly  as 
one  under  the  law,  and  not  as  one  under  grace. 

And  grace  is  best,  for  where  grace  is,  love  is  not  dis- 
tant. Grace !  the  old  Pagan  ideal  whose  charm  even 
unlovely  Paul  could  not  withstand,  but,  as  the  legend 


CONSCIOUS  AND  UNCONSCIOUS  KNOWERS.    39 

tells  us,  his  soul  fainted  within  him,  his  heart  misgave 
him,  and,  standing  alone  on  the  seashore  at  dusk,  he 
"  troubled  deaf  heaven  with  his  bootless  cries,"  his  thin 
voice  pleading  for  grace  after  the  flesh. 

The  waves  came  in  one  after  another,  the  sea-gulls 
cried  together  after  their  kind,  the  wind  rustled  among 
the  dried  canes  upon  the  sandbanks,  and  there  came  a 
voice  from  heaven  saying,  "  Let  My  grace  be  sufficient 
for  thee."  Whereon,  failing  of  the  thing  itself,  he  stole 
the  word  and  strove  to  crush  its  meaning  to  the  mea- 
sure of  his  own  limitations.  But  the  true  grace,  with 
her  groves  and  high  places,  and  troups  of  young  men 
and  maidens  crowned  with  flowers,  and  singing  of  love 
and  youth  and  wine — the  true  grace  he  drove  out  into 
the  wilderness — high  up,  it  may  be,  into  Piora,  and  into 
such-like  places.  Happy  they  who  harboured  her  in 
her  ill  report. 

It  is  common  to  hear  men  wonder  what  new  faith 
will  be  adopted  by  mankind  if  disbelief  in  the  Christian 
religion  should  become  general.  They  seem  to  expect 
that  some  new  theological  or  quasi-theological  system 
will  arise,  which,  mutatis  mutandis,  shall  be  Christianity 
over  again.  It  is  a  frequent  reproach  against  those  who 
maintain  that  the  supernatural  element  of  Christianity 
is  without  foundation,  that  they  bring  forward  no  such 
system  of  their  own.  They  pull  down  but  cannot 
build.  We  sometimes  hear  even  those  who  have  come 
to  the  same  conclusions  as  the  destroyers  say,  that 
having  nothing  new  to  set  up,  they  will  not  attack  the 
old.  But  how  can  people  set  up  a  new  superstition, 
knowing  it  to  be  a  superstition  ?  Without  faith  in 


40  LIFE  AND  HABIT. 

their  own  platform,  a  faith  as  intense  as  that  mani- 
fested by  the  early  Christians,  how  can  they  preach  ? 
A  new  superstition  will  come,  but  it  is  in  the  very 
essence  of  things  that  its  apostles  should  have  no  sus- 
picion of  its  real  nature ;  that  they  should  no  more 
recognise  the  common  element  between  the  new  and  the 
old  than  the  early  Christians  recognised  it  between 
their  faith  and  Paganism.  If  they  did,  they  would  be 
paralysed.  Others  say  that  the  new  fabric  may  be  seen 
rising  on  every  side,  and  that  the  coming  religion  is 
science.  Certainly  its  apostles  preach  it  without  mis- 
giving, but  it  is  not  on  that  account  less  possible  that 
it  may  prove  only  to  be  the  coming  superstition — 
like  Christianity,  true  to  its  true  votaries,  and,  like 
Christianity,  false  to  those  who  follow  it  introspec- 
tively. 

It  may  well  be  we  shall  find  we  have  escaped  from 
one  set  of  taskmasters  to  fall  into  the  hands  of  others 
far  more  ruthless.  The  tyranny  of  the  Church  is  light 
in  comparison  with  that  which  future  generations  may 
have  to  undergo  at  the  hands  of  the  doctrinaires.  The 
Church  did  uphold  a  grace  of  some  sort  as  the  summum 
lonum,  in  comparison  with  which  all  so-called  eartlily 
knowledge — knowledge,  that  is  to  say,  which  had  not 
passed  through  so  many  people  as  to  have  become 
living  and  incarnate — was  unimportant.  Do  what  we 
may,  we  are  still  drawn  to  the  unspoken  teaching  of  her 
less  introspective  ages  with  a  force  which  no  falsehood 
could  command.  Her  buildings,  her  music,  her  archi- 
tecture, touch  us  as  none  other  on  the  whole  can  do ; 
when  she  speaks  there  are  many  of  us  who  think  that 


CONSCIOUS  AND  UNCONSCIOUS  KNOWERS.    41 

she  denies  the  deeper  truths  of  her  own  profounder 
mind,  and  unfortunately  her  tendency  is  now  towards 
more  rather  than  less  introspection.  The  more  she 
gives  way  to  this — the  more  she  becomes  conscious  of 
knowing — the  less  she  will  know.  But  still  her  ideal 
is  in  grace. 

The  so-called  man  of  science,  on  the  other  hand, 
seems  now  generally  inclined  to  make  light  of  all  know- 
ledge, save  of  the  pioneer  character.  His  ideal  is  in  self- 
conscious  knowledge.  Let  us  have  no  more  Lo,  here, 
with  the  professor ;  he  very  rarely  knows  what  he  says 
he  knows ;  no  sooner  has  he  misled  the  world  for 
a  sufficient  time  with  a  great  flourish  of  trumpets 
than  he  is  toppled  over  by  one  more  plausible  than 
himself.  He  is  but  medicine-man,  augur,  priest,  in  its 
latest  development ;  useful  it  may  be,  but  requiring  to 
be  well  watched  by  those  who  value  freedom.  "Wait 
till  he  has  become  more  powerful,  and  note  the  vagaries 
which  his  conceit  of  knowledge  will  indulge  in.  The 
Church  did  not  persecute  while  she  was  still  weak.  Of 
course  every  system  has  had,  and  will  have,  its  heroes, 
but,  as  we  all  very  well  know,  the  heroism  of  the  hero 
is  but  remotely  due  to  system ;  it  is  due  not  to  argu- 
ments, nor  reasoning,  nor  to  any  consciously  recognised 
perceptions,  but  to  those  deeper  sciences  which  lie  far 
beyond  the  reach  of  self-analysis,  and  for  the  study 
of  which  there  is  but  one  schooling — to  have  had  good 
forefathers  for  many  generations. 

Above  all  things,  let  no  unwary  reader  do  me  the 
injustice  of  believing  in  me.  In  that  I  write  at  all  I 
am  among  the  damned.  If  he  must  believe  in  any- 


42  LIFE  AND  HABIT. 

thing,  let  him  believe  in  the  music  of  Handel,  the 
painting  of  Giovanni  Bellini,  and  in  the  thirteenth 
chapter  of  St.  Paul's  First  Epistle  to  the  Corinthians. 

But  to  return.  Whenever  we  find  people  knowing 
that  they  know  this  or  that,  we  have  the  same  story  over 
and  over  again.  They  do  not  yet  know  it  perfectly. 

We  come,  therefore,  to  the  conclusion  that  our  know- 
ledge and  reasonings  thereupon,  only  become  perfect, 
assured,  unhesitating,  when  they  have  become  auto- 
matic, and  are  thus  exercised  without  further  con- 
scious effort  of  the  mind,  much  in  the  same  way  as  we 
cannot  walk  nor  read  nor  write  perfectly  till  we  can 
do  so  automatically. 


(43  ) 


CHAPTER  III. 

APPLICATION  OF  FOREGOING  CHAPTERS  TO  CERTAIN 
HABITS  ACQUIRED  AFTER  BIRTH  WHICH  ARE  COM- 
MONLY CONSIDERED  INSTINCTIVE. 

WHAT  is  true  of  knowing  is  also  true  of  willing.  The 
more  intensely  we  will,  the  less  is  our  will  deliberate 
and  capable  of  being  recognised  as  will  at  all.  So 
that  it  is  common  to  hear  men  declare  under  certain 
circumstances  that  they  had  no  will,  but  were  forced 
into  their  own  action  under  stress  of  passion  or  tempta- 
tion. But  in  the  more  ordinary  actions  of  life,  we 
observe,  as  in  walking  or  breathing,  that  we  do  not 
will  anything  utterly  and  without  remnant  of  hesita- 
tion, till  we  have  lost  sight  of  the  fact  that  we  are 
exercising  our  will. 

The  question,  therefore,  is  forced  upon  us,  how  far 
this  principle  extends,  and  whether  there  may  not  be 
unheeded  examples  of  its  operation  which,  if  we  con- 
sider them,  will  land  us  in  rather  unexpected  conclu- 
sions. If  it  be  granted  that  consciousness  of  knowledge 
and  of  volition  vanishes  when  the  knowledge  and  the 
volition  have  become  intense  and  perfect,  may  it  not 
be  possible  that  many  actions  which  we  do  without 


44  LIFE  AND  HABIT. 

knowing  how  we  do  them,  and  without  any  con- 
scious exercise  of  the  will — actions  which  we  certainly 
could  not  do  if  we  tried  to  do  them,  nor  refrain  from 
doing  if  for  any  reason  we  wished  to  do  so — are  done 
so  easily  and  so  unconsciously  owing  to  excess  of 
knowledge  or  experience  rather  than  deficiency,  we 
having  done  them  too  often,  knowing  how  to  do  them 
too  well,  and  having  too  little  hesitation  as  to  the 
method  of  procedure,  to  be  capable  of  following  our 
own  action  without  the  utter  derangement  of  such 
action  altogether ;  or,  in  other  cases,  because  we  have 
so  long  settled  the  question,  that  we  have  stowed  away 
the  whole  apparatus  with  which  we  work  in  corners  of 
our  system  which  we  cannot  now  conveniently  reach  ? 

It  may  be  interesting  to  see  whether  we  can  find 
any  class  or  classes  of  actions  which  would  seem  to 
link  actions  which  for  some  time  after  birth  we  could 
not  do  at  all,  and  in  which  our  proficiency  has  reached 
the  stage  of  unconscious  performance  obviously  through 
repeated  effort  and  failure,  and  through  this  only,  with 
actions  which  we  could  do  as  soon  as  we  were  born, 
and  concerning  which  it  would  at  first  sight  appear 
absurd  to  say  that  they  can  have  been  acquired  by  any 
process  in  the  least  analogous  to  that  which  we  com- 
monly call  experience,  inasmuch  as  the  creature  itself 
which  does  them  has  only  just  begun  to  exist,  and  can- 
not, therefore,  in  the  very  nature  of  things,  have  had 
experience. 

Can  we  see  that  actions,  for  the  acquisition  of 
which  experience  is  such  an  obvious  necessity,  that 
whenever  we  see  the  acquisition  we  assume  the  ex- 


APPLICATION  OF  FOREGOING  CHAPTERS.    45 

perience,  gradate  away  imperceptibly  into  actions 
which  would  seem,  according  to  all  reasonable  analogy, 
to  presuppose  experience,  of  which,  however,  the  time 
and  place  seem  obscure,  if  not  impossible  ? 

Eating  and  drinking  would  appear  to  be  such  actions. 
The  new-born  child  cannot  eat,  and  cannot  drink,  but  he 
can  swallow  as  soon  as  he  is  born;  and  swallowing  would 
appear  (as  we  may  remark  in  passing)  to  have  been  an 
earlier  faculty  of  animal  life  than  that  of  eating  with 
teeth.  The  ease  and  unconsciousness  with  which  we  eat 
and  drink  is  clearly  attributable  to  practice  ;  but  a  very- 
little  practice  seems  to  go  a  long  way — a  suspiciously 
small  amount  of  practice — as  though  somewhere  or  at 
some  other  time  there  must  have  been  more  practice 
than  we  can  account  for.  We  can  very  readily  stop  eat- 
ing or  drinking,  and  can  follow  our  own  action  without 
difficulty  in  either  process ;  but,  as  regards  swallowing, 
which  is  the  earlier  habit,  we  have  less  power  of  self- 
analysis  and  control :  when  we  have  once  committed 
ourselves  beyond  a  certain  point  to  swallowing,  we 
must  finish  doing  so, — that  is  to  say,  our  control  over 
the  operation  ceases.  Also,  a  still  smaller  experience 
seems  necessary  for  the  acquisition  of  the  power  to 
swallow  than  appeared  necessary  in  the  case  of  eating ; 
and  if  we  get  into  a  difficulty  we  choke,  and  are  more 
at  a  loss  how  to  become  introspective  than  we  are  about 
eating  and  drinking. 

Why  should  a  baby  be  able  to  swallow — which 
one  would  have  said  was  the  more  complicated  pro- 
cess of  the  two — with  so  much  less  practice  than 
it  takes  him  to  learn  to  eat  ?  How  comes  it  that  he 


46  LIFE  AND  HABIT. 

exhibits  in  the  case  of  the  more  difficult  operation  all 
the  phenomena  which  ordinarily  accompany  a  more 
complete  mastery  and  longer  practice  ?  Analogy 
would  certainly  seem  to  point  in  the  direction  of 
thinking  that  the  necessary  experience  cannot  have 
been  wanting,  and  that,  too,  not  in  such  a  quibbling 
sort  as  when  people  talk  about  inherited  habit  or 
the  experience  of  the  race,  which,  without  explana- 
tion, is  to  plain-speaking  persons  very  much  the  same, 
in  regard  to  the  individual,  as  no  experience  at  all, 
but  band  fide  in  the  child's  own  person. 

Breathing,  again,  is  an  action  acquired  after  birth, 
generally  with  some  little  hesitation  and  difficulty,  but 
still  acquired  in  a  time  seldom  longer,  as  I  am  informed, 
than  ten  minutes  or  a  quarter  of  an  hour.  For  an  art 
which  has  to  be  acquired  at  all,  there  would  seem  here, 
as  in  the  case  of  eating,  to  be  a  disproportion  between, 
on  the  one  hand,  the  intricacy  of  the  process  performed, 
and  on  the  other,  the  shortness  of  the  time  taken  to 
acquire  the  practice,  and  the  ease  and  unconsciousness 
with  which  its  exercise  is  continued  from  the  moment 
of  acquisition. 

We  observe  that  in  later  life  much  less  difficult 
and  intricate  operations  than  breathing  require  much 
longer  practice  before  they  can  be  mastered  to  the 
extent  of  unconscious  performance.  We  observe  also 
that  the  phenomena  attendant  on  the  learning  by  an  in- 
fant to  breathe  are  extremely  like  those  attendant  upon 
the  repetition  of  some  performance  by  one  who  has  done 
it  very  often  before,  but  who  requires  just  a  little  prompt- 
ing to  set  him  off,  on  getting  which,  the  whole  familiar 


APPLICATION  OF  FOREGOING  CHAPTERS.    4? 

routine  presents  itself  before  him,  and  he  repeats  his 
task  by  rote.  Surely  then  we  are  justified  in  suspect- 
ing that  there  must  have  been  more  bond  fide  personal 
recollection  and  experience,  with  more  effort  and  failure 
on  the  part  of  the  infant  itself  than  meet  the  eye. 

It  should  be  noticed,  also,  that  our  control  over 
breathing  is  very  limited.  We  can  hold  our  breath 
a  little,  or  breathe  a  little  faster  for  a  short  time, 
but  we  cannot  do  this  for  long,  and  after  having  gone 
without  air  for  a  certain  time  we  must  breathe. 

Seeing  and  hearing  require  some  practice  before 
their  free  use  is  mastered,  but  not  very  much.  They 
are  so  far  within  our  control  that  we  can  see  more  by 
looking  harder,  and  hear  more  by  listening  attentively 
— but  they  are  beyond  our  control  in  so  far  as  that  we 
must  see  and  hear  the  greater  part  of  what  presents 
itself  to  us  as  near,  and  at  the  same  time  unfamiliar, 
unless  we  turn  away  or  shut  our  eyes,  or  stop  our  ears 
by  a  mechanical  process ;  and  when  we  do  this  it  is  a 
sign  that  we  have  already  involuntarily  seen  or  heard 
more  than  we  wished.  The  familiar,  whether  sight  or 
sound,  very  commonly  escapes  us. 

Take  again  the  processes  of  digestion,  the  action  of 
the  heart,  and  the  oxygenisation  of  the  blood — pro- 
cesses of  extreme  intricacy,  done  almost  entirely  un- 
consciously, and  quite  beyond  the  control  of  our 
volition. 

Is  it  possible  that  our  unconsciousness  concerning 
our  own  performance  of  all  these  processes  arises  from 
over-experience  ? 

Is  there  anything  in  digestion,  or  the  oxygenisation 


48  LIFE  AND  HABIT. 

of  the  blood,  different  in  kind  to  the  rapid  unconscious 
action  of  a  man  playing  a  difficult  piece  of  music  on 
the  piano  ?  There  may  be  in  degree,  but  as  a  man 
who  sits  down  to  play  what  he  well  knows,  plays 
on,  when  once  started,  almost,  as  we  say,  mechanically, 
so,  having  eaten  his  dinner,  he  digests  it  as  a  matter  of 
course,  unless  it  has  been  in  some  way  unfamiliar  to 
him,  or  he  to  it,  owing  to  some  derangement  or  occur- 
rence with  which  he  is  unfamiliar,  and  under  which 
therefore  he  is  at  a  loss  how  to  comport  himself,  as  a 
player  would  be  at  a  loss  how  to  play  with  gloves  on, 
or  with  gout  in  his  fingers,  or  if  set  to  play  music  up- 
side down. 

Can  we  show  that  all  the  acquired  actions  of  child- 
hood and  after-life,  which  we  now  do  unconsciously,  or 
without  conscious  exercise  of  the  will,  are  familiar 
acts — acts  which  we  have  already  done  a  very  great 
number  of  times  ? 

Can  we  also  show  that  there  are  no  acquired  actions 
which  we  can  perform  in  this  automatic  manner,  which 
were  not  at  one  time  difficult,  requiring  attention,  and 
liable  to  repeated  failure,  our  volition  failing  to 
command  obedience  from  the  members  which  should 
carry  its  purposes  into  execution  ? 

If  so,  analogy  will  point  in  the  direction  of  thinking 
that  other  acts  which  we  do  even  more  unconsciously 
may  only  escape  our  power  of  self-examination  and 
control  because  they  are  even  more  familiar — because 
we  have  done  them  oftener ;  and  we  may  imagine  that 
if  there  were  a  microscope  which  could  show  us  the 
minutest  atoms  of  consciousness  and  volition,  we  should 


APPLICA  TION  OF  FOREGOING  CHAPTERS.    49 

find  that  even  the  apparently  most  automatic  actions 
•were  yet  done  in  due  course,  upon  a  balance  of  con- 
siderations, and  under  the  deliberate  exercise  of  the 
will. 

We  should  also  incline  to  think  that  even  such  an 
action  as  the  oxygenisation  of  its  blood  by  an  infant  of 
ten  minutes'  old,  can  only  be  done  so  well  and  so 
unconsciously,  after  repeated  failures  on  the  part  of  the 
infant  itself. 

True,  as  has  been  already  implied,  we  do  not  imme- 
diately see  when  the  baby  could  have  made  the 
necessary  mistakes  and  acquired  that  infinite  practice 
without  which  it  could  never  go  through  such  complex 
processes  satisfactorily ;  we  have  therefore  invented 
the  words  "  hereditary  instinct,"  and  consider  them  as 
accounting  for  the  phenomenon  ;  but  a  very  little 
reflection  will  show  that  though  these  words  may  be  a 
very  good  way  of  stating  the  difficulty,  they  do  little 
or  nothing  towards  removing  it. 

Why  should  hereditary  instinct  enable  a  creature  to 
dispense  with  the  experience  which  we  see  to  be  neces- 
sary in  all  other  cases  before  difficult  operations  can  be 
performed  successfully  ? 

What  is  this  talk  that  is  made  about  the  experience 
of  the  race,  as  though  the  experience  of  one  man  could 
profit  another  who  knows  nothing  about  him  ?  If  a 
man  eats  his  dinner,  it  nourishes  him  and  not  his  neigh- 
bour ;  if  he  learns  a  difficult  art,  it  is  he  that  can  do  it 
and  not  his  neighbour.  Yet,  practically,  we  see  that 
the  vicarious  experience,  which  seems  so  contrary  to  our 
common  observation,  does  nevertheless  appear  to  hold 


50  LIFE  AND  HABIT. 

good  in  the  case  of  creatures  and  their  descendants. 
Is  there,  then,  any  way  of  bringing  these  apparently 
conflicting  phenomena  under  the  operation  of  one  law  ? 
Is  there  any  way  of  showing  that  this  experience  of  the 
race,  of  which  so  much  is  said  without  the  least  attempt 
to  show  in  what  way  it  may  or  does  become  the  ex- 
perience of  the  individual,  is  in  sober  seriousness  the 
experience  of  one  single  being  only,  repeating  in  a  great 
many  different  ways  certain  performances  with  which 
he  has  become  exceedingly  familiar  ? 

It  would  seem  that  we  must  either  suppose  the  con- 
ditions of  experience  to  differ  during  the  earlier  stages 
of  life  from  those  which  we  observe  them  to  become 
during  the  heyday  of  any  existence — and  this  would 
appear  very  gratuitous,  tolerable  only  as  a  suggestion 
because  the  beginnings  of  life  are  so  obscure,  that  in 
such  twilight  we  may  do  pretty  much  whatever  we 
please  without  danger  of  confutation — or  that  we  must 
suppose  the  continuity  of  life  and  sameness  between 
living  beings,  whether  plants  or  animals,  and  their 
descendants,  to  be  far  closer  than  we  have  hitherto 
believed ;  so  that  the  experience  of  one  person  is  not 
enjoyed  by  his  successor,  so  much  as  that  the  successor 
is  bond  fide  but  a  part  of  the  life  of  his  progenitor, 
imbued  with  all  his  memories,  profiting  by  all  his 
experiences — which  are,  in  fact,  his  own — and  only  un- 
conscious of  the  extent  of  his  own  memories  aiv\  ex- 
periences owing  to  their  vastness  and  already  infinite 
repetitions. 

Certainly  it  presents  itself  to  us  at  once  as  a  sin- 
gular coincidence — 


APPLICA  TION  OF  FOREGOING  CHAPTERS.      51 

I.  That  we  are  most  conscious  of,  and  have  most  con- 
trol over,  such  habits  as  speech,  the  upright  position,  the 
arts  and  sciences,  which  are  acquisitions  peculiar  to 
the  human  race,  always  acquired  after  birth,  and  not 
common  to  ourselves  and  any  ancestor  who  had  not 
become  entirely  human. 

II.  That  we  are  less  conscious  of,  and  have  less  control 
over,  eating  and  drinking,  swallowing,  breathing,  seeing 
and  hearing,  which  were  acquisitions  of  our  prehuman 
ancestry,  and  for  which  we  had  provided  ourselves 
with  all  the  necessary  apparatus  before  we  saw  light, 
but  which  are  still,  geologically  speaking,  recent,  or 
comparatively  recent. 

III.  That  we  are  most  unconscious  of,  and  have  least 
control  over,  our  digestion  and  circulation,  which  belonged 
even  to  our  invertebrate  ancestry,  and  which  are  habits, 
geologically  speaking,  of  extreme  antiquity. 

There  is  something  too  like  method  in  this  for  it 
to  be  taken  as  the  result  of  mere  chance — chance  again 
being  but  another  illustration  of  Nature's  love  of  a 
contradiction  in  terms;  for  everything  is  chance,  and 
nothing  is  chance.  And  you  may  take  it  that  all  is 
chance  or  nothing  chance,  according  as  you  please, 
but  you  must  not  have  half  chance  and  half  not 
chance. 

Does  it  not  seem  as  though  the  older  and  more 
confirmed  the  habit,  the  more  unquestioning  the  act 
of  volition,  till,  in  the  case  of  the  oldest  habits,  the 
practice  of  succeeding  existences  has  so  formulated  the 
procedure,  that,  on  being  once  committed  to  such  and 
such  a  line  beyond  a  certain  point,  the  subsequent 


52  LIFE  AND  HABIT. 

course  is  so  clear  as  to  be  open  to  no  further  doubt,  to 
admit  of  no  alternative,  till  the  very  power  of  question- 
ing is  gone,  and  even  the  consciousness  of  volition  ? 
And  this  too  upon  matters  which,  in  earlier  stages  of  a 
man's  existence,  admitted  of  passionate  argument  and 
anxious  deliberation  whether  to  resolve  them  thus  or 
thus,  with  heroic  hazard  and  experiment,  which  on 
the  losing  side  proved  to  be  vice,  and  on  the  winning 
virtue.  For  there  was  passionate  argument  once  what 
shape  a  man's  teeth  should  be,  nor  can  the  colour 
of  his  hair  be  considered  as  even  yet  settled,  or  likely 
to  be  settled  for  a  very  long  time. 

It  is  one  against  legion  when  a  creature  tries  to 
differ  from  his  own  past  selves.  He  must  yield  or 
die  if  he  wants  to  differ  widely,  so  as  to  lack  natural 
instincts,  such  as  hunger  or  thirst,  or  not  to  gratify 
them.  It  is  more  righteous  in  a  man  that  he  should 
"  eat  strange  food,"  and  that  his  cheek  should  "  so 
much  as  lank  not,"  than  that  he  should  starve  if 
the  strange  food  be  at  his  command.  His  past  selves 
are  living  in  him  at  this  moment  with  the  accumu- 
lated life  of  centuries.  "Do  this,  this,  this,  which 
we  too  have  done,  and  found  our  profit  in  it,"  cry  the 
souls  of  his  forefathers  within  him.  Faint  are  the  far 
ones,  coming  and  going  as  the  sound  of  bells  wafted 
on  to  a  high  mountain ;  loud  and  clear  are  the  near 
ones,  urgent  as  an  alarm  of  fire.  "  Withhold,"  cry  some. 
"  Go  on  boldly,"  cry  others.  "  Me,  me,  me,  revert  hither- 
ward,  my  descendant,"  shouts  one  as  it  were  from  some 
high  vantage-ground  over  the  heads  of  the  clamorous 
multitude.  "  Nay,  but  me,  me,  me,"  echoes  another ; 


APPLICATION  OF  FOREGOING  CHAPTERS.     53 

and  our  former  selves  fight  within  us  and  wrangle  for 
our  possession.  Have  we  not  here  what  is  commonly 
called  an  internal  tumult,  when  dead  pleasures  and 
pains  tug  within  us  hither  and  thither  ?  Then  may 
the  battle  be  decided  by  what  people  are  pleased  to 
call  our  own  experience.  Our  own  indeed  !  What  is 
our  own  save  by  mere  courtesy  of  speech  ?  A  matter 
of  fashion.  Sanction  sanctifieth  and  fashion  fashioneth. 
And  so  with  death — the  most  inexorable  of  all  con- 
ventions. 

However  this  may  be,  we  may  assume  it  as  an 
axiom  with  regard  to  actions  acquired  after  birth,  that 
we  never  do  them  automatically  save  as  the  result 
of  long  practice,  and  after  having  thus  acquired  perfect 
mastery  over  the  action  in  question. 

But  given  the  practice  or  experience,  and  the 
intricacy  of  the  process  to  be  performed  appears  to 
matter  very  little.  There  is  hardly  anything  con- 
ceivable as  being  done  by  man,  which  a  certain  amount 
of  familiarity  will  not  enable  him  to  do,  as  it  were 
mechanically  and  without  conscious  effort.  "The 
most  complex  and  difficult  movements,"  writes  Mr. 
Darwin,  "  can  in  time  be  performed  without  the  least 
effort  or  consciousness."  All  the  main  business  of  life 
is  done  thus  unconsciously  or  semi-unconsciously. 
For  what  is  the  main  business  of  life?  We  work 
that  we  may  eat  and  digest,  rather  than  eat  and  digest 
that  we  may  work ;  this,  at  any  rate,  is  the  normal 
state  of  things :  the  more  important  business  then  is 
that  which  is  carried  on  unconsciously.  So  again 
the  action  of  the  brain,  which  goes  on  prior  to 


54  LIFE  AND  HABIT. 

our  realising  the  idea  in  which  it  results,  is  not 
perceived  by  the  individual.  So  also  all  the  deeper 
springs  of  action  and  conviction.  The  residuum  with 
which  we  fret  and  worry  ourselves  is  a  mere  matter 
of  detail,  as  the  higgling  and  haggling  of  the  market, 
which  is  not  over  the  bulk  of  the  price,  but  over  the 
last  halfpenny. 

Shall  we  say,  then,  that  a  baby  of  a  day  old  sucks 
(which  involves  the  whole  principle  of  the  pump,  and 
hence  a  profound  practical  knowledge  of  the  laws  of 
pneumatics  and  hydrostatics),  digests,  oxygenises  its 
blood  (millions  of  years  before  Sir  Humphry  Davy 
discovered  oxygen),  sees  and  hears — all  most  difficult 
and  complicated  operations,  involving  a  knowledge  of 
the  facts  concerning  optics  and  acoustics,  compared 
with  which  the  discoveries  of  Newton  sink  into  utter 
insignificance  ?  Shall  we  say  that  a  baby  can  do  all 
these  things  at  once,  doing  them  so  well  and  so 
regularly,  without  being  even  able  to  direct  its 
attention  to  them,  and  without  mistake,  and  at  the 
same  time  not  know  how  to  do  them,  and  never  have 
done  them  before  ? 

Such  an  assertion  would  be  a  contradiction  to  the 
whole  experience  of  mankind.  Surely  the  onus  pro- 
bandi  must  rest  with  him  who  makes  it. 

A  man  may  make  a  lucky  hit  now  and  again  by 
what  is  called  a  fluke,  but  even  this  must  be  only 
a  little  in  advance  of  his  other  performances  of  the 
same  kind.  He  may  multiply  seven  by  eight  by  a 
fluke  after  a  little  study  of  the  multiplication  table, 
but  he  will  not  be  able  to  extract  the  cube  root  of 


AP PLICA  TION  OF  FOREGOING  CHAPTERS.      55 

49 1  3  by  a  fluke,  without  long  training  in  arithmetic, 
any  more  than  an  agricultural  labourer  would  be  able 
to  operate  successfully  for  cataract.  If,  then,  a  grown 
man  cannot  perform  so  simple  an  operation  as  that, 
we  will  say,  for  cataract,  unless  he  have  been  long 
trained  in  other  similar  operations,  and  until  he  has 
done  what  comes  to  the  same  thing  many  times  over, 
with  what  show  of  reason  can  we  maintain  that  one 
who  is  so  far  less  capable  than  a  grown  man,  can 
perform  such  vastly  more  difficult  operations,  without 
knowing  how  to  do  them,  and  without  ever  having 
done  them  before  ?  There  is  no  sign  of  "  fluke " 
about  the  circulation  of  a  baby's  blood.  There  may 
perhaps  be  some  little  hesitation  about  its  earliest 
breathing,  but  this,  as  a  general  rule,  soon  passes 
over,  both  breathing  and  circulation,  within  an  hour 
after  birth,  being  as  regular  and  easy  as  at  any  time 
during  life.  Is  it  reasonable,  then,  to  say  that  the 
baby  does  these  things  without  knowing  how  to  do 
them,  and  without  ever  having  done  them  before,  and 
continues  to  do  them  by  a  series  of  lifelong  flukes  ? 

It  would  be  well  if  those  who  feel  inclined  to 
hazard  such  an  assertion  would  find  some  other 
instances  of  intricate  processes  gone  through  by  people 
who  know  nothing  about  them,  and  never  had  any 
practice  therein.  What  is  to  know  how  to  do  a 
thing  ?  Surely  to  do  it.  What  is  proof  that  we 
know  how  to  do  a  thing  ?  Surely  the  fact  that  we  can 
do  it.  A  man  shows  that  he  knows  how  to  throw 
the  boomerang  by  throwing  the  boomerang.  No 
amount  of  talking  or  writing  can  get  over  this ;  ipso 


56  LIFE  AND  HABIT. 

facto,  that  a  baby  breathes  and  makes  its  blood  circulate, 
it  knows  how  to  do  so;  and  the  fact  that  it  does  not 
know  its  own  knowledge  is  only  proof  of  the  perfection 
of  that  knowledge,  and  of  the  vast  number  of  past 
occasions  on  which  it  must  have  been  exercised 
already.  As  we  have  said  already,  it  is  less  obvious 
when  the  baby  could  have  gained  its  experience,  so 
as  to  be  able  so  readily  to  remember  exactly  what  to 
do ;  but  it  is  more  easy  to  suppose  that  the  necessary 
occasions  cannot  have  been  wanting,  than  that  the 
power  which  we  observe  should  have  been  obtained 
without  practice  and  memory. 

If  we  saw  any  self-consciousness  on  the  baby's  part 
about  its  breathing  or  circulation,  we  might  suspect 
that  it  had  had  less  experience,  or  profited  less  by  its 
experience,  than  its  neighbours — exactly  in  the  same 
manner  as  we  suspect  a  deficiency  of  any  quality 
which  we  see  a  man  inclined  to  parade.  We  all 
become  introspective  when  we  find  that  we  do  not 
know  our  business,  and  whenever  we  are  introspective 
we  may  generally  suspect  that  we  are  on  the  verge  of 
unproficiency.  Unfortunately,  in  the  case  of  sickly 
children,  we  observe  that  they  sometimes  do  become 
conscious  of  their  breathing  and  circulation,  just  as  in 
later  life  we  become  conscious  that  we  have  a  liver 
or  a  digestion.  In  that  case  there  is  always  some- 
thing wrong.  The  baby  that  becomes  aware  of  its 
breathing  does  not  know  how  to  breathe,  and  will 
suffer  for  his  ignorance  and  incapacity,  exactly  in  the 
same  way  as  he  will  suffer  in  later  life  for  ignorance 
and  incapacity  in  any  other  respect  in  which  his  peers 


APPLICATION  OF  FOREGOING  CHAPTERS.      57 

are  commonly  knowing  and  capable.  In  the  case  of 
inability  to  breathe,  the  punishment  is  corporal,  breath- 
ing being  a  matter  of  fashion,  so  old  and  long  settled 
that  nature  can  admit  of  no  departure  from  the  esta- 
blished custom,  and  the  procedure  in  case  of  failure 
is  as  much  formulated  as  the  fashion  itself.  In  the 
case  of  the  circulation,  the  whole  performance  has 
become  one  so  utterly  of  rote,  that  the  mere  discovery 
that  we  could  do  it  at  all  was  considered  one  of  the 
highest  nights  of  human  genius. 

It  has  been  said  a  day  will  come  when  the  Polar 
ice  shall  have  accumulated,  till  it  forms  vast  continents 
many  thousands  of  feet  above  the  level  of  the  sea,  all  of 
solid  ice.  The  weight  of  this  mass  will,  it  is  believed, 
cause  the  world  to  topple  over  on  its  axis,  so  that  the 
earth  will  be  upset  as  an  ant-heap  overturned  by 
a  ploughshare.  In  that  day  the  icebergs  will  come 
crunching  against  our  proudest  cities,  razing  them  from 
off  the  face  of  the  earth  as  though  they  were  made 
of  rotten  blotting-paper.  There  is  no  respect  now  of 
Handel  nor  of  Shakespeare;  the  works  of  Eembrandt 
and  Bellini  fossilise  at  the  bottom  of  the  sea.  Grace, 
beauty,  and  wit,  all  that  is  precious  in  music,  literature, 
and  art — all  gone.  In  the  morning  there  was  Europe. 
In  the  evening  there  are  no  more  populous  cities  nor 
busy  hum  of  men,  but  a  sea  of  jagged  ice,  a  lurid  sun- 
set, and  the  doom  of  many  ages.  Then  shall  a  scared 
remnant  escape  in  places,  and  settle  upon  the  changed 
continent  when  the  waters  have  subsided — a  simple 
people,  busy  hunting  shellfish  on  the  drying  ocean 
beds,  and  with  little  time  for  introspection ;  yet  they 


58  LIFE  AND  HABIT. 

can  read  and  write  and  sum,  for  by  that  time  these 
accomplishments  will  have  become  universal,  and  will 
be  acquired  as  easily  as  we  now  learn  to  talk ;  but 
they  do  so  as  a  matter  of  course,  and  without  self- 
consciousness.  Also  they  make  the  simpler  kinds  of 
machinery  too  easily  to  be  able  to  follow  their  own 
operations — the  manner  of  their  own  apprenticeship 
being  to  them  as  a  buried  city.  May  we  not  imagine 
that,  after  the  lapse  of  another  ten  thousand  years  or 
so,  some  one  of  them  may  again  become  cursed  with 
lust  of  introspection,  and  a  second  Harvey  may  astonish 
the  world  by  discovering  that  it  can  read  and  write, 
and  that  steam-engines  do  not  grow,  but  are  made  ? 
It  may  be  safely  prophesied  that  he  will  die  a  martyr, 
and  be  honoured  in  the  fourth  generation. 


(59) 


CHAPTEK  IV. 

APPLICATION  OF  THE  FOREGOING   PRINCIPLES   TO  ACTIONS 
AND  HABITS  ACQUIRED  BEFORE  BIRTH. 

BUT  if  we  once  admit  the  principle  that  consciousness 
and  volition  have  a  tendency  to  vanish  as  soon  as 
practice  has  rendered  any  habit  exceedingly  familiar, 
so  that  the  mere  presence  of  an  elaborate  but  uncon- 
scious performance  shall  carry  with  it  a  presumption 
of  infinite  practice,  we  shall  find  it  impossible  to  draw 
the  line  at  those  actions  which  we  see  acquired  after 
birth,  no  matter  at  how  early  a  period.  The  whole 
history  and  development  of  the  embryo  in  all  its 
stages  forces  itself  on  our  consideration.  Birth  has 
been  made  too  much  of.  It  is  a  salient  feature  in  the 
history  of  the  individual,  but  not  more  salient  than  a 
hundred  others,  and  far  less  so  than  the  commence- 
ment of  his  existence  as  a  single  cell  uniting  in 
itself  elements  derived  from  both  parents,  or  perhaps 
than  any  point  in  his  whole  existence  as  an  embryo. 
For  many  years  after  we  are  born  we  are  still  very 
incomplete.  We  cease  to  oxygenise  our  blood  vicari- 
ously as  soon  as  we  are  born,  but  we  still  derive  our 
sustenance  from  our  mothers.  Birth  is  but  the  begin- 
ning of  doubt,  the  first  hankering  after  scepticism,  the 


60  LIFE  AND  HABIT. 

dreaming  of  a  dawn  of  trouble,  the  end  of  certainty 
and  of  settled  convictions.  Not  but  what  before  birth 
there  have  been  unsettled  convictions  (more's  the  pity) 
with  not  a  few,  and  after  birth  we  have  still  so  made 
up  our  minds  upon  many  points  as  to  have  no  further 
need  of  reflection  concerning  them ;  nevertheless,  in 
the  main,  birth  is  the  end  of  that  time  when  we  really 
knew  our  business,  and  the  beginning  of  the  days 
wherein  we  know  not  what  we  would  do,  or  do.  It  is 
therefore  the  beginning  of  consciousness,  and  infancy 
is  as  the  dosing  of  one  who  turns  in  his  bed  on  waking, 
and  takes  another  short  sleep  before  he  rises.  When 
we  were  yet  unborn,  our  thoughts  kept  the  roadway 
decently  enough ;  then  were  we  blessed ;  we  thought 
as  every  man  thinks,  and  held  the  same  opinions 
as  our  fathers  and  mothers  had  done  upon  nearly 
every  subject.  Life  was  not  an  art — and  a  very 
difficult  art — much  too  difficult  to  be  acquired  in  a 
lifetime ;  it  was  a  science  of  which  we  were  consum- 
mate masters. 

In  this  sense,  then,  birth  may  indeed  be  looked  upon 
as  the  most  salient  feature  in  a  man's  life ;  but  this 
is  not  at  all  the  sense  in  which  it  is  commonly  so 
regarded.  It  is  commonly  considered  as  the  point  at 
which  we  begin  to  live.  More  truly  it  is  the  point 
at  which  we  leave  off  knowing  how  to  live. 

A  chicken,  for  example,  is  never  so  full  of  conscious- 
ness, activity,  reasoning  faculty,  and  volition,  as  when 
it  is  an  embryo  in  the  eggshell,  making  bones,  and  flesh, 
and  feathers,  and  eyes,  and  claws,  with  nothing  but  a 
little  warmth  and  white  of  egg  to  make  them  from. 


APPLICATION  OF  FOREGOING  PRINCIPLES.    61 

This  is  indeed  to  make  bricks  with  but  a  small 
modicum  of  straw.  There  is  no  man  in  the  whole 
world  who  knows  consciously  and  articulately  as  much 
as  a  half-hatched  hen's  egg  knows  unconsciously. 
Surely  the  egg  in  its  own  way  must  know  quite  as 
much  as  the  chicken  does.  We  say  of  the  chicken  that 
it  knows  how  to  run  about  as  soon  as  it  is  hatched. 
So  it  does ;  but  had  it  no  knowledge  before  it  was 
hatched  ?  What  made  it  lay  the  foundations  of  those 
limbs  which  should  enable  it  to  run  about  ?  What 
made  it  grow  a  horny  tip  to  its  bill  before  it  was 
hatched,  so  that  it  might  peck  all  round  the  larger  end 
of  the  eggshell  and  make  a  hole  for  itself  to  get  out 
at  ?  Having  once  got  outside  the  eggshell,  the  chicken 
throws  away  this  horny  tip ;  but  is  it  reasonable  to 
suppose  that  it  would  have  grown  it  at  all  unless  it 
had  known  that  it  would  want  something  with  which 
to  break  the  eggshell  ?  And  again,  is  it  in  the  least 
agreeable  to  our  experience  that  such  elaborate 
machinery  should  be  made  without  endeavour,  failure, 
perseverance,  intelligent  contrivance,  experience,  and 
practice  ? 

In  the  presence  of  such  considerations,  it  seems 
impossible  to  refrain  from  thinking  that  there  must 
be  a  closer  continuity  of  identity,  life,  and  memory, 
between  successive  generations  than  we  generally 
imagine.  To  shear  the  thread  of  life,  and  hence  ot 
memory,  between  one  generation  and  its  successor,  is, 
so  to  speak,  a  brutal  measure,  an  act  of  intellectual 
butchery,  and  like  all  such  strong  high-handed  measures, 
a  sign  of  weakness  in  him  who  is  capable  of  it  till  all 


62  LIFE  AND  HABIT. 

other  remedies  have  been  exhausted.  It  is  mere  horse 
science,  akin  to  the  theories  of  the  convulsionists  in 
the  geological  kingdom,  and  of  the  believers  in  the 
supernatural  origin  of  the  species  of  plants  and  animals. 
Yet  it  is  to  be  feared  that  we  have  not  a  few  among  us 
who  would  feel  shocked  rather  at  the  attempt  towards 
a  milder  treatment  of  the  facts  before  them,  than  at  a 
continuance  of  the  present  crass  tyranny  with  which 
we  tiy  to  crush  them  inside  our  preconceived  opinions. 
It  is  quite  common  to  hear  men  of  education  maintain 
that  not  even  when  it  was  on  the  point  of  being 
hatched,  had  the  chicken  sense  enough  to  know  that  it 
wanted  to  get  outside  the  eggshell.  It  did  indeed 
peck  all  round  the  end  of  the  shell,  which,  if  it 
wanted  to  get  out,  would  certainly  be  the  easiest  way 
of  effecting  its  purpose ;  but  it  did  not,  they  say,  peck 
because  it  was  aware  of  this,  but  "promiscuously." 
Curious,  such  a  uniformity  of  promiscuous  action 
among  so  many  eggs  for  so  many  generations.  If  we 
see  a  man  knock  a  hole  in  a  wall  on  finding  that 
he  cannot  get  out  of  a  place  by  any  other  means,  and 
if  we  see  him  knock  this  hole  in  a  very  workmanlike 
way,  with  an  implement  with  which  he  has  been  at  great 
pains  to  make  for  a  long  time  past,  but  which  he  throws 
away  as  soon  as  he  has  no  longer  use  for  it,  thus 
showing  that  he  had  made  it  expressly  for  the  purpose  of 
escape,  do  we  say  that  this  person  made  the  implement 
and  broke  the  wall  of  his  prison  promiscuously  ?  No 
jury  would  acquit  a  burglar  on  these  grounds.  Then 
why,  without  much  more  evidence  to  the  contrary  than 
we  have,  or  can  hope  to  have,  should  we  not  suppose 


APPLICATION  OF  FOREGOING  PRINCIPLES.   63 

that  with  chickens,  as  with  men,  signs  of  contrivance 
are  indeed  signs  of  contrivance,  however  quick,  subtle, 
and  untraceable,  the  contrivance  may  be  ?  Again,  I 
have  heard  people  argue  that  though  the  chicken,  when 
nearly  hatched,  had  such  a  glimmering  of  sense  that 
it  pecked  the  shell  because  it  wanted  to  get  out,  yet 
that  it  is  not  conceivable  that,  so  long  before  it  was 
hatched,  it  should  have  had  the  sense  to  grow  the  horny 
tip  to  its  bill  for  use  when  wanted.  This,  at  any  rate, 
they  say,  it  must  have  grown,  as  the  persons  previously 
referred  to  would  maintain,  promiscuously. 

Now  no  one  indeed  supposes  that  the  chicken  does 
what  it  does,  with  the  same  self-consciousness  with 
which  a  tailor  makes  a  suit  of  clothes.  Not  any  one 
who  has  thought  upon  the  subject  is  likely  to  do  it 
so  great  an  injustice.  The  probability  is  that  it  knows 
what  it  is  about  to  an  extent  greater  than  any  tailor 
ever  did  or  will,  for,  to  say  the  least  of  it,  many 
thousands  of  years  to  come.  It  works  with  such  absolute 
certainty  and  so  vast  an  experience,  that  it  is  utterly 
incapable  of  following  the  operations  of  its  own  mind 
— as  accountants  have  been  known  to  add  up  long 
columns  of  pounds,  shillings,  and  pence,  running  the 
three  fingers  of  one  hand,  a  finger  for  each  column,  up 
the  page,  and  putting  the  result  down  correctly  at  the 
bottom,  apparently  without  an  effort.  In  the  case  of 
the  accountant,  we  say  that  the  processes  which  his 
mind  goes  through  are  so  rapid  and  subtle  as  to  elude 
his  own  power  of  observation  as  well  as  ours.  We  do 
not  deny  that  his  mind  goes  through  processes  of  some 
kind ;  we  very  readily  admit  that  it  must  do  so,  and 


64  LIFE  AND  HABIT. 

say  that  these  processes  are  so  rapid  and  subtle,  owing, 
as  a  general  rule,  to  long  experience  in  addition.  Why 
then  should  we  find  it  so  difficult  to  conceive  that 
this  principle,  which  we  observe  to  play  so  large  a  part 
in  mental  physiology,  wherever  we  can  observe  mental 
physiology  at  all,  may  have  a  share  also  in  the  per- 
formance of  intricate  operations  otherwise  inexplicable, 
though  the  creature  performing  them  is  not  man,  or 
man  only  in  embryo  ? 

Again,  after  the  chicken  is  hatched,  it  grows  more 
feathers  and  bones  and  blood,  but  we  still  say  that  it 
knows  nothing  about  all  this.  What  then  do  we  say 
it  does  know  ?  One  is  almost  ashamed  to  confess  that 
we  only  credit  it  with  knowing  what  it  appears  to 
know  by  processes  which  we  find  it  exceedingly  easy 
to  follow,  or  perhaps  rather,  which  we  find  it  abso- 
lutely impossible  to  avoid  following,  as  recognising 
too  great  a  family  likeness  between  them,  and  those 
which  are  most  easily  followed  in  our  own  minds,  to 
be  able  to  sit  down  in  comfort  under  a  denial  of  the 
resemblance.  Thus,  for  example,  if  we  see  a  chicken 
running  away  from  a  fox,  we  do  admit  that  the 
chicken  knows  the  fox  would  kill  it  if  it  caught  it. 

On  the  other  hand,  if  we  allow  that  the  half- 
hatched  chicken  grew  the  horny  tip  to  be  ready  for 
use,  with  an  intensity  of  unconscious  contrivance 
which  can  be  only  attributed  to  experience,  we  are 
driven  to  admit  that  from  the  first  moment  the  hen 
began  to  sit  upon  it — and  earlier  too  than  this — the 
egg  was  always  full  of  consciousness  and  volition,  and 
that  during  its  embryological  condition  the  unhatched 


APPLICATION  OF  FOREGOING  PRINCIPLES.   65 

chicken  is  doing  exactly  what  it  continues  doing  from 
the  moment  it  is  hatched  till  it  dies ;  that  is  to  say, 
attempting  to  better  itself,  doing  (as  Aristotle  says 
all  creatures  do  all  things  upon  all  occasions)  what  it 
considers  most  for  its  advantage  under  the  existing 
circumstances.  What  it  may  think  most  advantageous 
will  depend,  while  it  is  in  the  eggshell,  upon  exactly 
the  same  causes  as  will  influence  its  opinions  in 
later  life — to  wit,  upon  its  habits,  its  past  circum- 
stances and  ways  of  thinking ;  for  there  is  nothing,  as 
Shakespeare  tells  us,  good  or  ill,  but  thinking  makes 
it  so. 

The  egg  thinks  feathers  much  more  to  its  advantage 
than  hair  or  fur,  and  much  more  easily  made.  If  it 
could  speak,  it  would  probably  tell  us  that  we  could 
make  them  ourselves  very  easily  after  a  few  lessons, 
if  we  took  the  trouble  to  try,  but  that  hair  was 
another  matter,  which  it  really  could  not  see  how  any 
protoplasm  could  be  got  to  make.  Indeed,  during  the 
more  intense  and  active  part  of  our  existence,  in  the 
earliest  stages,  that  is  to  say,  of  our  embryological  life, 
we  could  probably  have  turned  our  protoplasm  into 
feathers  instead  of  hair  if  we  had  cared  about  doing 
so.  If  the  chicken  can  make  feathers,  there  seems  no 
sufficient  reason  for  thinking  that  we  cannot  do  so, 
beyond  the  fact  that  we  prefer  hair,  and  have  preferred 
it  for  so  many  ages,  that  we  have  lost  the  art  along 
with  the  desire  of  making  feathers,  if  indeed  any  of 
our  ancestors  ever  possessed  it.  The  stuff  with  which 
we  make  hair  is  practically  the  same  as  that  with 
which  chickens  make  feathers.  It  is  nothing  but 


66  LIFE  AND  HABIT. 

protoplasm,  and  protoplasm  is  like  certain  prophecies, 
out  of  which  anything  can  be  made  by  the  creature 
which  wants  to  make  it.  Everything  depends  upon 
whether  a  creature  knows  its  own  mind  sufficiently 
well,  and  has  enough  faith  in  its  own  powers  of 
achievement.  When  these  two  requisites  are  wanting, 
the  strongest  giant  cannot  lift  a  two-ounce  weight; 
when  they  are  given,  a  bullock  can  take  an  eyelash 
out  of  its  eye  with  its  hind-foot,  or  a  minute  jelly 
speck  can  build  itself  a  house  out  of  various  materials 
which  it  will  select  according  to  its  purpose  with  the 
nicest  care,  though  it  have  neither  brain  to  think  with, 
nor  eyes  to  see  with,  nor  hands  nor  feet  to  work  with, 
nor  is  it  anything  but  a  minute  speck  of  jelly — faith 
and  protoplasm  only. 

That  this  is  indeed  so,  the  following  passage  from 
Dr.  Carpenter's  "  Mental  Physiology "  may  serve  to 
show : — 

"The  simplest  type  of  an  animal  consists  of  a 
minute  mass  of  '  protoplasm,'  or  living  jelly,  which  is 
not  yet  differentiated  into  '  organs  ; '  every  part  having 
the  same  endowments,  and  taking  an  equal  share  in 
every  action  which  the  creature  performs.  One  of 
these  'jelly  specks,'  the  amoeba,  moves  itself  about 
by  changing  the  form  of  its  body,  extemporising  a  foot 
(or  pseudopodium),  first  in  one  direction,  and  then  in 
another ;  and  then,  when  it  has  met  with  a  nutritive 
particle,  extemporises  a  stomach  for  its  reception,  by 
wrapping  its  soft  body  around  it.  Another,  instead 
of  going  about  in  search  of  food,  remains  in  one  place, 
but  projects  its  protoplasmic  substance  into  long 


APPLICATION  OF  FOREGOING  PRINCIPLES.   67 

pseudopodia,  which  entrap  and  draw  in  very  minute 
particles,  or  absorb  nutrient  material  from  the  liquid 
through  which  they  extend  themselves,  and  are  con- 
tinually becoming  fused  (as  it  were)  into  the  central 
body,  which  is  itself  continually  giving  off  new  pseudo- 
podia.  Now  we  can  scarcely  conceive  that  a  crea- 
ture of  such  simplicity  should  possess  any  distinct 
consciousness  of  its  needs  "  (why  not  ?),  "  or  that  its 
actions  should  be  directed  by  any  intention  of  its  own ; 
and  yet  the  writer  has  lately  found  results  of  the 
most  singular  elaborateness  to  be  wrought  out  by  the 
instrumentality  of  these  minute  jelly  specks,  which 
build  up  tests  or  casings  of  the  most  regular  geo- 
metrical symmetry  of  form,  and  of  the  most  artificial 
construction." 

On  this  Dr.  Carpenter  remarks  : — "  Suppose  a  human 
nmson  to  be  put  down  by  the  side  of  a  pile  of  stones 
of  various  shapes  and  sizes,  and  to  be  told  to  build  a 
dome  of  these,  smooth  on  both  surfaces,  without  using 
more  than  the  least  possible  quantity  of  a  very  tena- 
cious, but  very  costly,  cement,  in  holding  the  stones 
together.  If  he  accomplished  this  well,  he  would 
receive  credit  for  great  intelligence  and  skill.  Yet 
this  is  exactly  what  these  little  'jelly  specks  '  do  on 
a  most  minute  scale ;  the  '  tests '  they  construct,  when 
highly  magnified,  bearing  comparison  with  the  most 
skilful  masonry  of  man.  From  the  same  sandy  bottom 
one  species  picks  up  the  coarser  quartz  grains,  cements 
them  together  with  phosphate  of  iron  secreted  from  its 
own  substance  "  (should  not  this  rather  be,  "  which  it 
has  contrived  in  some  way  or  other  to  manufacture  "  ?), 


68  LIFE  AND  HABIT. 

and  thus  constructs  a  flask-shaped  '  test,'  having  a 
short  neck  and  a  large  single  orifice.  Another  picks  up 
the  finest  grains,  and  puts  them  together,  with  the 
same  cement,  into  perfectly  spherical  'tests'  of  the 
most  extraordinary  finish,  perforated  with  numerous 
small  pores  disposed  at  pretty  regular  intervals.  An- 
other selects  the  minutest  sand  grains  and  the  termi- 
nal portions  of  sponge  spicules,  and  works  them  up 
together — apparently  with  no  cement  at  all,  by  the 
mere  laying  of  the  spicules  —  into  perfect  white 
spheres,  like  homoeopathic  globules,  each  having  a 
single-fissured  orifice.  And  another,  which  makes  a 
straight,  many-chambered  'test,'  that  resembles  in 
form  the  chambered  shell  of  an  orthoceratite — the 
conical  mouth  of  each  chamber  projecting  into  the 
cavity  of  the  next — while  forming  the  walls  of  its 
chambers  of  ordinary  sand  grains  rather  loosely  held 
together,  shapes  the  conical  mouth  of  the  successive 
chambers  by  firmly  cementing  together  grains  of  ferru- 
ginous quartz,  which  it  must  have  picked  out  from  the 
general  mass." 

"To  give  these  actions,"  continues  Dr.  Carpenter, 
"  the  vague  designation  of  '  instinctive '  does  not  in  the 
least  help  us  to  account  for  them,  since  what  we  want 
is  to  discover  the  mechanism  by  which  they  are  worked 
out;  and  it  is  most  difficult  to  conceive  how  so 
artificial  a  selection  can  be  made  by  a  creature  so 
simple  "  (Mental  Physiology,  4th  ed.,  pp.  41-43). 

This  is  what  protoplasm  can  do  when  it  has  the 
talisman  of  faith — of  faith  which  worketh  all  wonders, 
either  in  the  heavens  above,  or  in  the  earth  beneath, 


APPLICATION  OF  FOREGOING  PRINCIPLES.    69 

or  in  the  waters  under  the  earth.  Truly  if  a  man 
have  faith,  even  as  a  grain  of  mustard  seed,  though  he 
may  not  be  able  to  remove  mountains,  he  will  at  any 
rate  be  able  to  do  what  is  no  less  difficult — make  a 
mustard  plant. 

Yet  this  is  but  a  barren  kind  of  comfort,  for  we 
have  not,  and  in  the  nature  of  things  cannot  have, 
sufficient  faith  in  the  unfamiliar,  inasmuch  as  the  very 
essence  of  faith  involves  the  notion  of  familiarity, 
which  can  grow  but  slowly,  from  experience  to  con- 
fidence, and  can  make  no  sudden  leap  at  any  time. 
Such  faith  cannot  be  founded  upon  reason, — that  is  to 
say,  upon  a  recognised  perception  on  the  part  of  the 
person  holding  it  that  he  is  holding  it,  and  of  the 
reasons  for  his  doing  so — or  it  will  shift  as  other 
reasons  come  to  disturb  it.  A  house  built  upon  reason 
is  a  house  built  upon  the  sand.  It  must  be  built 
upon  the  current  cant  and  practice  of  one's  peers,  for 
this  is  the  rock  which,  though  not  immovable,  is  still 
most  hard  to  move. 

But  however  this  may  be,  we  observe  broadly 
that  the  intensity  of  the  will  to  make  this  or  that,  and 
of  the  confidence  that  one  can  make  it,  depends  upon 
the  length  of  time  during  which  the  maker's  forefathers 
have  wanted  the  same  thing  before  it ;  the  older  the 
custom  the  more  inveterate  the  habit,  and,  with  the 
exception,  perhaps,  that  the  reproductive  system  13 
generally  the  crowning  act  of  development — an  exception 
which  I  will  hereafter  explain — the  earlier  its  manifesta- 
tion, until,  for  some  reason  or  another,  we  relinquish 
it  and  take  to  another,  which  we  must,  as  a  general 


70  LIFE  AND  HABIT. 

rule,  again  adhere  to  for  a  vast  number  of  generations, 
before  it  will  permanently  supplant  the  older  habit. 
In  our  own  case,  the  habit  of  breathing  like  a  fish 
through  gills  may  serve  as  an  example.  We  have  now 
left  off  this  habit,  yet  we  did  it  formerly  for  so  many 
generations  that  we  still  do  it  a  little ;  it  still  crosses 
our  embryological  existence  like  a  faint  memory  or 
dream,  for  not  easily  is  an  inveterate  habit  broken. 
On  the  other  hand — again  speaking  broadly — the  more 
recent  the  habit  the  later  the  fashion  of  its  organ,  as 
with  the  teeth,  speech,  and  the  higher  intellectual 
powers,  which  are  too  new  for  development  before 
we  are  actually  born. 

But  to  return  for  a  short  time  to  Dr.  Carpenter. 
Dr.  Carpenter  evidently  feels,  what  must  indeed  be 
felt  by  every  candid  mind,  that  there  is  no  sufficient 
reason  for  supposing  that  these  little  specks  of  jelly, 
without  brain,  or  eyes,  or  stomach,  or  hands,  or  feet, 
but  the  very  lowest  known  form  of  animal  life,  are  not 
imbued  with  a  consciousness  of  their  needs,  and  the 
reasoning  faculties  which  shall  enable  them  to  gratify 
those  needs  in  a  manner,  all  things  considered,  equalling 
the  highest  flights  of  the  ingenuity  of  the  highest 
animal — man.  This  is  no  exaggeration.  It  is  true,  that 
in  an  earlier  part  of  the  passage,  Dr.  Carpenter  has  said 
that  we  can  scarcely  conceive  so  simple  a  creature  to 
"  possess  any  distinct  consciousness  of  its  needs,  or  that 
its  actions  should  be  directed  by  any  intention  of  its 
own ; "  but,  on  the  other  hand,  a  little  lower  down  he 
says,  that  if  a  workman  did  what  comes  to  the  same 
thing  as  what  the  amoeba  does,  he  "  would  receive  credit 


APPLICATION  OF  FOREGOING  PRINCIPLES.   71 

for  great  intelligence  and  skill."  Now  if  an  amceba  can 
do  that,  for  which  a  workman  would  receive  credit  as 
for  a  highly  skilful  and  intelligent  performance,  the 
amceba  should  receive  no  less  credit  than  the  work- 
man ;  he  should  also  be  no  less  credited  with  skill  and 
intelligence,  which  words  unquestionably  involve  a 
distinct  consciousness  of  needs  and  an  action  directed 
by  an  intention  of  its  own.  So  that  Dr.  Carpenter 
seems  rather  to  blow  hot  and  cold  with  one  breath. 
Nevertheless  there  can  be  no  doubt  to  which  side  the 
minds  of  the  great  majority  of  mankind  will  incline 
upon  the  evidence  before  them ;  they  will  say  that 
the  creature  is  highly  reasonable  and  intelligent, 
though  they  would  readily  admit  that  long  practice 
and  familiarity  may  have  exhausted  its  powers  of 
attention  to  all  the  stages  of  its  own  performance,  just 
as  a  practised  workman  in  building  a  wall  certainly 
does  not  consciously  follow  all  the  processes  which  he 
goes  through. 

As  an  example,  however,  of  the  extreme  dislike  which 
philosophers  of  a  certain  school  have  for  making  the 
admissions  which  seem  somewhat  grudgingly  conceded 
by  Dr.  Carpenter,  we  may  take  the  paragraph  which 
immediately  follows  the  ones  which  we  have  just  quoted. 
Dr.  Carpenter  there  writes : — 

"  The  writer  has  often  amused  himself  and  others, 
when  by  the  seaside,  with  getting  a  terebella  (a  marine 
worm  that  cases  its  body  in  a  sandy  tube)  out  of  its 
house,  and  then,  putting  it  into  a  saucer  of  water  with 
a  supply  of  sand  and  comminuted  shell,  watching  its 
appropriation  of  these  materials  in  constructing  a  new 


72  LIFE  AND  HABIT. 

tube.  The  extended  tentacles  soon  spread  themselves 
over  the  bottom  of  the  saucer  and  lay  hold  of  whatever 
comes  in  their  way,  '  all  being  fish  that  comes  to  their 
net,'  and  in  half  an  hour  or  thereabouts  the  new  house 
is  finished,  though  on  a  very  rude  and  artificial  type. 
Now  here  the  organisation  is  far  higher ;  the  instru- 
mentality obviously  serves  the  needs  of  the  animal  and 
suffices  for  them ;  and  we  characterise  the  action,  on 
account  of  its  uniformity  and  apparent  ?mintelligence, 
as  instinctive." 

No  comment  will,  one  would  think,  be  necessary  to 
make  the  reader  feel  that  the  difference  between  the 
terebella  and  the  amoeba  is  one  of  degree  rather  than 
kind,  and  that  if  the  action  of  the  second  is  as 
conscious  and  reasonable  as  that,  we  will  say,  of  a  bird 
making  her  nest,  the  action  of  the  first  should  be  so 
also.  It  is  only  a  question  of  being  a  little  less 
skilful,  or  more  so,  but  skill  and  intelligence  would 
seem  present  in  both  cases.  Moreover,  it  is  more 
clever  of  the  terebella  to  have  made  itself  the  limbs 
with  which  it  can  work,  than  of  the  amoeba  to  be  able 
to  work  without  the  limbs ;  and  perhaps  it  is  more 
sensible  also  to  want  a  less  elaborate  dwelling,  provided 
it  is  sufficient  for  practical  purposes.  But  whether 
the  terebella  be  less  intelligent  than  the  amceba  or  not, 
it  does  quite  enough  to  establish  its  claim  to  intelli- 
gence of  a  higher  order ;  and  one  does  not  see  ground 
for  the  satisfaction  which  Dr.  Carpenter  appears  to 
find  at  having,  as  it  were,  taken  the  taste  of  the 
amoeba's  performance  out  of  our  mouth,  by  setting  us 
about  the  less  elaborate  performance  of  the  terebella, 


APPLICATION  OF  FOREGOING  PRINCIPLES.    73 

which  he  thinks  he  can  call  unintelligent  and  in- 
stinctive. 

I  may  be  mistaken  in  the  impression  I  have  derived 
from  the  paragraphs  I  have  quoted.  I  can  only  say  they 
give  me  the  impression  that  I  have  tried  to  convey  to 
the  reader,  i.e.,  that  the  writer's  assent  to  anything  like 
intelligence,  or  consciousness  of  needs,  in  an  animal 
low  down  in  the  scale  of  life,  is  grudging,  and  that 
he  is  more  comfortable  when  he  has  got  hold  of  one 
to  which  he  can  point  and  say  that  here,  at  any  rate, 
is  an  unintelligent  and  merely  instinctive  creature. 
I  have  only  called  attention  to  the  passage  as  an 
example  of  the  intellectual  bias  of  a  large  number  of 
exceedingly  able  and  thoughtful  persons,  among  whom, 
so  far  as  I  am  able  to  form  an  opinion  at  all,  few  have 
greater  claims  to  our  respectful  attention  than  Dr. 
Carpenter  himself. 

For  the  embryo  of  a  chicken,  then,  we  claim  exactly 
the  same  kind  of  reasoning  power  and  contrivance 
which  we  claim  for  the  amoeba,  or  for  our  own 
intelligent  performances  in  later  life.  We  do  not 
claim  for  it  much,  if  any,  perception  of  its  own  fore- 
thought, for  we  know  very  well  that  it  is  among  the 
most  prominent  features  of  intellectual  activity  that, 
after  a  number  of  repetitions,  it  ceases  to  be  per- 
ceived, and  that  it  does  not,  in  ordinary  cases,  cease 
to  be  perceived  till  after  a  very  great  number  of 
repetitions.  The  fact  that  the  embryo  chicken  makes 
itself  always  as  nearly  as  may  be  in  the  same  way, 
would  lead  us  to  suppose  that  it  would  be  unconscious 
of  much  of  its  own  action,  provided  it  were  always  the 


74  LIFE  AND  HABIT. 

same  chicken  which  made  itself  over  and  over  again. 
So  far  we  can  see,  it  always  is  unconscious  of  the 
greater  part  of  its  own  wonderful  performance.  Surely 
then  we  have  a  presumption  that  it  is  the  same  chicken 
which  makes  itself  over  and  over  again  ;  for  such  uncon- 
sciousness is  not  won,  so  far  as  our  experience  goes, 
by  any  other  means  than  by  frequent  repetition  of  the 
same  act  on  the  part  of  one  and  the  same  individual. 
How  this  can  be  we  shall  perceive  in  subsequent 
chapters.  In  the  meantime,  we  may  say  that  all 
knowledge  and  volition  would  seem  to  be  merely  parts 
of  the  knowledge  and  volition  of  the  primordial  cell 
(whatever  this  may  be),  which  slumbers  but  never 
dies — which  has  grown,  and  multiplied,  and  differen- 
tiated itself  into  the  compound  life  of  the  world,  and 
which  never  becomes  conscious  of  knowing  what  it 
has  once  learnt  effectually,  till  it  is  for  some  reason  on 
the  point  of,  or  in  danger  of,  forgetting  it. 

The  action,  therefore,  of  an  embryo  making  its  way 
up  in  the  world  from  a  simple  cell  to  a  baby,  develop- 
ing for  itself  eyes,  ears,  hands,  and  feet  while  yet 
unborn,  proves  to  be  exactly  of  one  and  the  same  kind 
as  that  of  a  man  of  fifty  who  goes  into  the  City  and 
tells  his  broker  to  buy  him  so  many  Great  Northern 
A  shares — that  is  to  say,  an  effort  of  the  will  exercised 
in  due  course  on  a  balance  of  considerations  as  to  the 
immediate  expediency,  and  guided  by  past  experience  ; 
while  children  who  do  not  reach  birth  are  but  pre- 
natal spendthrifts,  ne'er-do-weels,  inconsiderate  in- 
novators, the  unfortunate  in  business,  either  through 
their  own  fault  or  that  of  others,  or  through  inevitable 


APPLICATION  OF  FOREGOING  PRINCIPLES.    75 

mischances,  beings  who  are  culled  out  before  birth 
instead  of  after ;  so  that  even  the  lowest  idiot,  the 
most  contemptible  in  health  or  beauty,  may  yet  reflect 
with  pride  that  they  icere  lorn.  Certainly  we  observe 
that  those  who  have  had  good  fortune  (mother  and 
sole  cause  of  virtue,  and  sole  virtue  in  itself),  and  have 
profited  by  their  experience,  and  known  their  busi- 
ness best  before  birth,  so  that  they  made  themselves 
both  to  be  and  to  look  well,  do  commonly  on  an  aver- 
age prove  to  know  it  best  in  after-life  :  they  grow  their 
clothes  best  who  have  grown  their  limbs  best.  It  is  rare 
that  those  who  have  not  remembered  how  to  finish  their 
own  bodies  fairly  well  should  finish  anything  well  in 
later  life.  But  how  small  is  the  addition  to  their 
unconscious  attainments  which  even  the  Titans  of 
human  intellect  have  consciously  accomplished,  in 
comparison  with  the  problems  solved  by  the  meanest 
baby  living,  nay,  even  by  one  whose  birth  is  untimely ! 
In  other  words,  how  vast  is  that  back  knowledge 
over  which  we  have  gone  fast  asleep,  through  the 
prosiness  of  perpetual  repetition;  and  how  little  in 
comparison,  is  that  whose  novelty  keeps  it  still  within 
the  scope  of  our  conscious  perception !  What  is  the 
discovery  of  the  laws  of  gravitation  as  compared  with 
the  knowledge  which  sleeps  in  every  hen's  egg  upon  a 
kitchen  shelf  ? 

It  is  all  a  matter  of  habit  and  fashion.  Thus  we 
see  kings  and  councillors  of  the  earth  admired  for 
facing  death  before  what  they  are  pleased  to  call  dis- 
honour. If,  on  being  required  to  go  without  anything 


76  LIFE  AND  HABIT. 

they  have  been  accustomed  to,  or  to  change  their 
habits,  or  do  what  is  unusual  in  the  case  of  other 
kings  under  like  circumstances,  then,  if  they  but  fold 
their  cloak  decently  around  them,  and  die  upon  the 
spot  of  shame  at  having  had  it  even  required  of  them 
to  do  thus  or  thus,  then  are  they  kings  indeed,  of  old 
race,  that  know  their  business  from  generation  to 
generation.  Or  if,  we  will  say,  a  prince,  on  having  his 
dinner  brought  to  him  ill-cooked,  were  to  feel  the  indig- 
nity so  keenly  as  that  he  should  turn  his  face  to  the 
wall,  and  breathe  out  his  wounded  soul  in  one  sigh, 
do  we  not  admire  him  as  a  "real  prince,"  who  knows 
the  business  of  princes  so  well  that  he  can  conceive  of 
nothing  foreign  to  it  in  connection  with  himself,  the 
bare  effort  to  realise  a  state  of  things  other  than  what 
princes  have  been  accustomed  to  being  immediately 
fatal  to  him  ?  Yet  is  there  no  less  than  this  in  the 
demise  of  every  half-hatched  hen's  egg,  shaken  rudely 
by  a  schoolboy,  or  neglected  by  a  truant  mother ;  for 
surely  the  prince  would  not  die  if  he  knew  how  to  do 
otherwise,  and  the  hen's  egg  only  dies  of  being  required 
to  do  something  to  which  it  is  not  accustomed. 

But  the  further  consideration  of  this  and  other 
like  reflections  would  too  long  detain  us.  Suffice  it 
that  we  have  established  the  position  that  all  living 
creatures  which  show  any  signs  of  intelligence,  must 
certainly  each  one  have  already  gone  through  the 
embryonic  stages  an  infinite  number  of  times,  or  they 
could  no  more  have  achieved  the  intricate  process  of 
self-development  unconsciously,  than  they  could  play 


APPLICATION  OF  FOREGOING  PRINCIPLES.    77 

the  piano  unconsciously  without  any  previous  know- 
ledge of  the  instrument.  It  remains,  therefore,  to 
show  the  when  and  where  of  their  having  done  so, 
and  this  leads  us  naturally  to  the  subject  of  the 
following  chapter — Personal  Identity. 


CHAPTER  V. 

PERSONAL    IDENTITY. 

"  STRANGE  difficulties  have  been  raised  by  some,"  says 
Bishop  Butler,  "  concerning  personal  identity,  or  the 
sameness  of  living  agents  as  implied  in  the  notion  of 
our  existing  now  and  hereafter,  or  indeed  in  any  two 
consecutive  moments."  But  in  truth  it  is  not  easy  to 
see  the  strangeness  of  the  difficulty,  if  the  words  either 
"  personal  "  or  "  identity  "  are  used  in  any  strictness. 

Personality  is  one  of  those  ideas  with  which  we  are 
so  familiar  that  we  have  lost  sight  of  the  foundations 
upon  which  it  rests.  We  regard  our  personality  as  a 
simple  definite  whole ;  as  a  plain,  palpable,  individual 
thing,  which  can  be  seen  going  about  the  streets  or 
sitting  indoors  at  home,  which  lasts  us  our  lifetime, 
and  about  the  confines  of  which  no  doubt  can  exist 
in  the  minds  of  reasonable  people.  But  in  truth  this 
"  we,"  which  looks  so  simple  and  definite,  is  a  nebulous 
and  indefinable  aggregation  of  many  component  parts 
which  war  not  a  little  among  themselves,  our  per- 
ception of  our  existence  at  all  being  perhaps  due  to 
this  very  clash  of  warfare,  as  our  sense  of  sound 
and  light  is  due  to  the  jarring  of  vibrations. 


PERSONAL  IDENTITY.  79 

Moreover,  as  the  component  parts  of  our  identity 
change  from  moment  to  moment,  our  personality 
becomes  a  thing  dependent  upon  time  present,  \vhich 
has  no  logical  existence,  but  lives  only  upon  the  suffer- 
ance of  times  past  and  future,  slipping  out  of  our 
hands  into  the  domain  of  one  or  other  of  these  two 
claimants  the  moment  we  try  to  apprehend  it.  And 
not  only  is  our  personality  as  fleeting  as  the  present 
moment,  but  the  parts  which  compose  it  blend  some 
of  them  so  imperceptibly  into,  and  are  so  inextricably 
linked  on  to,  outside  things  which  clearly  form  no 
part  of  our  personality,  that  when  we  tiy  to  bring 
ourselves  to  book,  and  determine  wherein  we  consist, 
or  to  draw  a  line  as  to  where  we  begin  or  end,  we  find 
ourselves  completely  baffled.  There  is  nothing  but 
fusion  and  confusion. 

Putting  theology  on  one  side,  and  dealing  only  with 
the  common  daily  experience  of  mankind,  our  body 
is  certainly  part  of  our  personality.  With  the  de- 
struction of  our  bodies,  our  personality,  as  far  as  we 
can  follow  it,  comes  to  a  full  stop ;  and  with  every 
modification  of  them  it  is  correspondingly  modified. 
But  what  are  the  limits  of  our  bodies  ?  They  are 
composed  of  parts,  some  of  them  so  unessential  as  to 
be  hardly  included  in  personality  at  all,  and  to  be 
separable  from  ourselves  without  perceptible  effect,  as 
the  hair,  nails,  and  daily  waste  of  tissue.  Again,  other 
parts  are  very  important,  as  our  hands,  feet,  arms,  legs, 
&c.,  but  still  are  no  essential  parts  of  our  "  self "  or 
"soul,"  which  continues  to  exist  in  spite  of  their 
amputation.  Other  parts,  as  the  brain,  heart,  and 


80  LIFE  AND  HABIT. 

blood,  are  so  essential  that  they  caiinot  be  dispensed 
with,  yet  it  is  impossible  to  say  that  personality  consists 
in  any  one  of  them. 

Each  one  of  these  component  members  of  our  per- 
sonality is  continually  dying  and  being  born  again, 
supported  in  this  process  by  the  food  we  eat,  the  water 
we  drink,  and  the  air  we  breathe ;  which  three  things 
link  us  on,  and  fetter  us  down,  to  the  organic  and 
inorganic  world  about  us.  For  our  meat  and  drink, 
though  no  part  of  our  personality  before  we  eat  and 
drink,  cannot,  after  we  have  done  so,  be  separated 
entirely  from  us  without  the  destruction  of  our  person- 
ality altogether,  so  far  as  we  can  follow  it ;  and  who 
shall  say  at  what  precise  moment  our  food  has  or  has 
not  become  part  of  ourselves  ?  A  famished  man  eats 
food ;  after  a  short  time  his  whole  personality  is  so 
palpably  affected  that  we  know  the  food  to  have  entered 
into  him  and  taken,  as  it  were,  possession  of  him ;  but 
who  can  say  at  what  precise  moment  it  did  so  ?  Thus 
we  find  that  we  are  rooted  into  outside  things  and  melt 
away  into  them,  nor  can  any  man  say  he  consists 
absolutely  in  this  or  that,  nor  define  himself  so  certainly 
as  to  include  neither  more  nor  less  than  himself;  many 
undoubted  parts  of  his  personality  being  more  separable 
from  it,  and  changing  it  less  when  so  separated,  both 
to  his  own  senses  and  those  of  other  people,  than  other 
parts  which  are  strictly  speaking  no  parts  at  all. 

A  man's  clothes,  for  example,  as  they  lie  on  a  chair 
at  night  are  no. part  of  him,  but  when  he  wears  them 
they  would  appear  to  be  so,  as  being  a  kind  of  food 
which  warms  him  and  hatches  him,  and  the  loss  of 


PERSONAL  IDENTITY.  81 

which  may  kill  him  of  cold.  If  this  be  denied,  and  a 
man's  clothes  be  considered  as  no  part  of  his  self,  never- 
theless they,  with  his  money,  and  it  may  perhaps  be 
added  his  religious  opinions,  stamp  a  man's  indivi- 
duality as  strongly  as  any  natural  feature  could  stamp 
it.  Change  in  style  of  dress,  gain  or  loss  of  money, 
make  a  man  feel  and  appear  more  changed  than  having 
his  chin  shaved  or  his  nails  cut.  In  fact,  as  soon  as 
we  leave  common  parlance  on  one  side,  and  try  for  a 
scientific  definition  of  personality,  we  find  that  there 
is  none  possible,  any  more  than  there  can  be  a  demon- 
stration of  the  fact  that  we  exist  at  all — a  demonstration 
for  which,  as  for  that  of  a  personal  God,  many  have 
hunted  but  none  have  found.  The  only  solid  foundation 
is,  as  in  the  case  of  the  earth's  crust,  pretty  near  the 
surface  of  things ;  the  deeper  we  try  to  go,  the  damper 
and  darker  and  altogether  more  uncongenial  we  find  it. 
There  is  no  knowing  into  what  quagmire  of  superstition 
we  may  not  find  ourselves  drawn,  if  we  once  cut  our- 
selves adrift  from  those  superficial  aspects  of  things,  in 
which  alone  our  nature  permits  us  to  be  comforted. 

Common  parlance,  however,  settles  the  difficulty 
readily  enough  (as  indeed  it  settles  most  others  if  they 
show  signs  of  awkwardness)  by  the  simple  process  of 
ignoring  it :  we  decline,  and  very  properly,  to  go  into 
the  question  of  where  personality  begins  and  ends,  but 
assume  it  to  be  known  by  every  one,  and  throw  the 
onus  of  not  knowing  it  upon  the  over-curious,  who  had 
better  think  as  their  neighbours  do,  right  or  wrong,  or 
there  is  no  knowing  into  what  villainy  they  may  not 
presently  fall. 


82  LIFE  AND  HABIT. 

Assuming,  then,  that  every  one  knows  what  is 
meant  by  the  word  "  person  "  (and  such  superstitious 
bases  as  this  are  the  foundations  upon  which  all  action, 
whether  of  man,  beast,  or  plant,  is  constructed  and 
rendered  possible;  for  even  the  corn  in  the  fields 
grows  upon  a  superstitious  basis  as  to  its  own  existence, 
and  only  turns  the  earth  and  moisture  into  wheat 
through  the  conceit  of  its  own  ability  to  do  so,  with- 
out which  faith  it  were  powerless;  and  the  lichen 
only  grows  upon  the  granite  rock  by  first  saying  to 
itself,  "  I  think  I  can  do  it ; "  so  that  it  would  not  be 
able  to  grow  unless  it  thought  it  could  grow,  and 
would  not  think  it  could  grow  unless  it  found  itself 
able  to  grow,  and  thus  spends  its  life  arguing  in  a  most 
vicious  circle,  basing  its  action  upon  a  hypothesis,  which 
hypothesis  is  in  turn  based  upon  its  action) — assuming 
that  we  know  what  is  meant  by  the  word  "  person,"  we 
say  that  we  are  one  and  the  same  from  the  moment  of 
our  birth  to  the  moment  of  our  death,  so  that  whatever 
is  done  by  or  happens  to  any  one  between  birth  and 
death,  is  said  to  happen  to  or  be  done  by  one  individual. 
This  in  practice  is  found  to  be  sufficient  for  the  law 
courts  and  the  purposes  of  daily  life,  which,  being  full 
of  hurry  and  the  pressure  of  business,  can  only  tolerate 
compromise,  or  conventional  rendering  of  intricate 
phenomena.  When  facts  of  extreme  complexity  have 
to  be  daily  and  hourly  dealt  with  by  people  whose 
time  is  money,  they  must  be  simplified,  and  treated 
much  as  a  painter  treats  them,  drawing  them  in 
squarely,  seizing  the  more  important  features,  and 
neglecting  all  that  does  not  assert  itself  as  too  essential 


PERSONAL  IDENTITY.  83 

to  be  passed  over — hence  the  slang  and  cant  words  of 
every  profession,  and  indeed  all  language ;  for  language 
at  best  is  but  a  kind  of  "  patter,"  the  only  way,  it  is 
true,  in  many  cases,  of  expressing  our  ideas  to  one 
another,  but  still  a  very  bad  way,  and  not  for  one 
moment  comparable  to  the  unspoken  speech  which  we 
may  sometimes  have  recourse  to.  The  metaphors  and 
faqons  de  parler  to  which  even  in  the  plainest  speech 
we  are  perpetually  recurring  (as,  for  example,  in  this 
last  two  lines,  "plain,"  "perpetually,"  and  "recur- 
ring," are  all  words  based  on  metaphor,  and  hence 
more  or  less  liable  to  mislead)  often  deceive  us,  as  though 
there  were  nothing  more  than  what  we  see  and  say, 
and  as  though  words,  instead  of  being,  as  they  are,  the 
creatures  of  our  convenience,  had  some  claim  to  be  the 
actual  ideas  themselves  concerning  which  we  are 
conversing. 

This  is  so  well  expressed  in  a  letter  I  have  recently 
received  from  a  friend,  now  in  New  Zealand,  and 
certainly  not  intended  by  him  for  publication,  that  I 
shall  venture  to  quote  the  passage,  but  should  say  that 
I  do  so  without  his  knowledge  or  permission  which  I 
should  not  be  able  to  receive  before  this  book  must  be 
completed. 

"  Words,  words,  words,"  he  writes,  "  are  the  stum- 
bling-blocks in  the  way  of  truth.  Until  you  think  of 
things  as  they  are,  and  not  of  the  words  that  misre- 
present them,  you  cannot  think  rightly.  Words  pro- 
duce the  appearance  of  hard  and  fast  lines  where  there 
are  none.  Words  divide ;  thus  we  call  this  a  man,  that 
an  ape,  that  a  monkey,  while  they  are  all  only 


84  LIFE  AND  HABIT. 

differentiations  of  the  same  thing.  To  tliiiik  of  a  thing 
they  must  be  got  rid  of:  they  are  the  clothes  that 
thoughts  wear — only  the  clothes.  I  say  this  over  and 
over  again,  for  there  is  nothing  of  more  importance. 
Other  men's  words  will  stop  you  at  the  beginning  of  an 
investigation.  A  man  may  play  with  words  all  his 
life,  arranging  them  and  rearranging  them  like 
dominoes.  If  I  could  think  to  you  without  words  you 
would  understand  me  better." 

If  such  remarks  as  the  above  hold  good  at  all,  they 
do  so  with  the  words  "  personal  identity."  The  least 
reflection  will  show  that  personal  identity  in  any  sort 
of  strictness  is  an  impossibility.  The  expression  is  one 
of  the  many  ways  in  which  we  are  obliged  to  scamp 
our  thoughts  through  pressure  of  other  business  which 
pays  us  better.  For  surely  all  reasonable  people  will 
feel  that  an  infant  an  hour  before  birth,  when  in  the 
eye  of  the  law  he  has  no  existence,  and  could  not  be 
called  a  peer  for  another  sixty  minutes,  though  his 
father  were  a  peer,  and  already  dead, — surely  such  an 
embryo  is  more  personally  identical  with  the  baby  into 
which  he  develops  within  an  hour's  time  than  the  born 
baby  is  so  with  itself  (if  the  expression  may  be 
pardoned),  one,  twenty,  or  it  may  be  eighty  years  after 
birth.  There  is  more  sameness  of  matter;  there  are 
fewer  differences  of  any  kind  perceptible  by  a  third 
person ;  there  is  more  sense  of  continuity  on  the 
part  of  the  person  himself,  and  far  more  of  all  that 
goes  to  make  up  our  sense  of  sameness  of  personality 
between  an  embryo  an  hour  before  birth  and  the  child 
on  being  born,  than  there  is  between  the  child  just 


PERSONAL  IDENTITY.  85 

born  and  the  man  of  twenty.  Yet  there  is  no  hesita- 
tion about  admitting  sameness  of  personality  between 
these  two  last. 

On  the  other  hand,  if  that  hazy  contradiction  in 
terms,  "  personal  identity,"  be  once  allowed  to  retreat 
behind  the  threshold  of  the  womb,  it  has  eluded  us 
once  for  all.  What  is  true  of  one  hour  before  birth  is 
true  of  two,  and  so  on  till  we  get  back  to  the  impreg- 
nate ovum,  which  may  fairly  claim  to  have  been  person- 
ally identical  with  the  man  of  eighty  into  which  it 
ultimately  developed,  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  there  is 
no  particle  of  same  matter  nor  sense  of  continuity 
between  them,  nor  recognised  community  of  instinct, 
nor  indeed  of  anything  which  goes  to  the  making  up 
of  that  which  we  call  identity. 

There  is  far  more  of  all  these  things  common  to  the 
impregnate  ovum  and  the  ovum  immediately  before 
impregnation,  or  again  between  the  impregnate  ovum, 
and  both  the  ovum  before  impregnation  and  the 
spermatozoon  which  impregnated  it.  Nor,  if  we  admit 
personal  identity  between  the  ovum  and  the  octogena- 
rian, is  there  any  sufficient  reason  why  we  should  not 
admit  it  between  the  impregnate  ovum  and  the  two 
factors  of  which  it  is  composed,  which  two  factors  are 
but  offshoots  from  two  distinct  personalities,  of  which 
they  are  as  much  part  as  the  apple  is  of  the  apple-tree; 
so  that  an  impregnate  ovum  cannot  without  a  violation 
of  first  principles  be  debarred  from  claiming  personal 
identity  with  both  its  parents,  and  hence,  by  an  easy 
chain  of  reasoning,  ivith  each  of  the  impregnate  ova 
from  which  its  parents  were  developed. 


86  LIFE  AND  HABIT. 

So  that  each  ovum  when  impregnate  should  be  con- 
sidered not  as  descended  from  its  ancestors,  but  as 
being  a  continuation  of  the  personality  of  every  ovum 
in  the  chain  of  its  ancestry,  which  every  ovum  it 
actually  is  quite  as  truly  as  the  octogenarian  is  the 
same  identity  with  the  ovum  from  which  he  has  been 
developed. 

This  process  cannot  stop  short  of  the  primordial  cell, 
which  again  will  probably  turn  out  to  be  but  a  brief 
resting-place.  We  therefore  prove  each  one  of  us  to 
be  actually  the  primordial  cell  which  never  died  nor 
dies,  but  has  differentiated  itself  into  the  life  of  the 
world,  all  living  beings  whatever,  being  one  with  it, 
and  members  one  of  another. 

To  look  at  the  matter  for  a  moment  in  another  light, 
it  will  be  admitted  that  if  the  primordial  cell  had  been 
killed  before  leaving  issue,  all  its  possible  descendants 
would  have  been  killed  at  one  and  the  same  time.  It 
is  hard  to  see  how  this  single  fact  does  not  establish 
at  the  point,  as  it  were,  of  a  logical  bayonet,  an  identity 
between  any  creature  and  all  others  that  are  descended 
from  it. 

In  Bishop  Butler's  first  dissertation  on  personality, 
we  find  expressed  very  much  the  same  opinions  as 
would  follow  from  the  above  considerations,  though 
they  are  mentioned  by  the  Bishop  only  to  be  con- 
demned, namely,  "  that  personality  is  not  a  permanent 
but  a  transient  thing ;  that  it  lives  and  dies,  begins  and 
ends  continually;  that  no  man  can  any  more  remain 
one  and  the  same  person  two  moments  together,  than 
two  successive  moments  can  be  one  and  the  same 


PERSONAL  IDENTITY.  87 

moment ; "  in  which  case,  he  continues,  our  present  self 
would  not  be  "  in  reality  the  same  with  the  self  of 
yesterday,  but  another  like  self  or  person  coming  up 
in  its  room  and  mistaken  for  it,  to  which  another  self 
will  succeed  to-morrow."  This  view  the  Bishop  pro- 
ceeds to  reduce  to  absurdity  by  saying,  "  It  must  be  a 
fallacy  upon  ourselves  to  charge  our  present  selves 
with  anything  we  did,  or  to  imagine  our  present  selves 
interested  in  anything  which  befell  us  yesterday;  or 
that  our  present  self  will  be  interested  in  what  will 
befall  us  to-morrow.  This,  I  say,  must  follow,  for  if 
the  self  or  person  of  to-day  and  that  of  to-morrow  are 
not  the  same,  but  only  like  persons,  the  person  of  to- 
day is  really  no  more  interested  in  what  will  befall 
the  person  of  to-morrow  than  in  what  will  befall  any 
other  person.  It  may  be  thought,  perhaps,  that  this 
is  not  a  just  representation  of  the  opinion  we  are 
speaking  of,  because  those  who  maintain  it  allow  that 
a  person  is  the  same  as  far  back  as  his  remembrance 
reaches.  And  indeed  they  do  use  the  words  identity 
and  same  person.  NOT  will  language  permit  these 
words  to  be  laid  aside,  since,  if  they  were,  there  must 
be  I  know  not  what  ridiculous  periphrasis  substituted 
in  the  room  of  them.  But  they  cannot  consistently 
with  themselves  mean  that  the  person  is  really  the 
same.  For  it  is  self-evident  that  the  personality 
cannot  be  really  the  same,  if,  as  they  expressly  assert, 
that  in  which  it  consists  is  not  the  same.  And  as  con- 
sistently with  themselves  they  cannot,  so  I  think  it 
appears  they  do  not  mean  that  the  person  is  really  the 
same,  but  only  that  he  is  so  in  a  fictitious  sense  ;  in  such 


88  LIFE  AND  HABIT. 

a  sense  only  as  they  assert — for  this  they  do  assert — 
that  any  number  of  persons  whatever  may  be  the  same 
person.  The  bare  unfolding  of  this  notion,  and  laying 
it  thus  naked  and  open,  seems  the  best  confutation 
of  it." 

This  fencing,  for  it  does  not  deserve  the  name  of 
serious  disputation,  is  rendered  possible  by  the  laxness 
with  which  the  words  "  identical "  and  "  identity  "  are 
commonly  used.  Bishop  Butler  would  not  seriously 
deny  that  personality  undergoes  great  changes  between 
infancy  and  old  age,  and  hence  that  it  must  undergo 
some  change  from  moment  to  moment.  So  universally 
is  this  recognised,  that  it  is  common  to  hear  it  said  of 
such  and  such  a  man  that  he  is  not  at  all  the  person 
he  was,  or  of  such  and  such  another  that  he  is  twice 
the  man  he  used  to  be — expressions  than  which  none 
nearer  the  truth  can  well  be  found.  On  the  other  hand, 
those  whom  Bishop  Butler  is  intending  to  confute 
would  be  the  first  to  admit  that,  though  there  are  many 
changes  between  infancy  and  old  age,  yet  they  come 
about  in  any  one  individual  under  such  circumstances 
as  we  are  all  agreed  in  considering  as  the  factors  of 
personal  identity  rather  than  as  hindrances  thereto — 
that  is  to  say,  there  has  been  no  death  on  the  part  of 
the  individual  between  any  two  phases  of  his  existence, 
and  any  one  phase  has  had  a  permanent  though  perhaps 
imperceptible  effect  upon  all  succeeding  ones.  So  that 
no  one  ever  seriously  argued  in  the  manner  supposed 
by  Bishop  Butler,  unless  with  modifications  and  saving 
clauses,  to  which  it  does  not  suit  his  purpose  to  call 
attention. 


PERSONAL  IDENTITY.  89 

Identical  strictly  means  "  one  and  the  same ; "  and  if 
it  were  tied  down  to  its  strictest  usage,  it  would  indeed 
follow  very  logically,  as  we  have  said  already,  that  no 
such  thing  as  personal  identity  is  possible,  but  that  the 
case  actually  is  as  Bishop  Butler  has  supposed  his 
opponents  without  qualification  to  maintain  it.  In 
common  use,  however,  the  word  "  identical "  is  taken  to 
mean  anything  so  like  another  that  no  vital  or  essential 
differences  can  be  perceived  between  them,  as  in  the 
case  of  two  specimens  of  the  same  kind  of  plant,  when 
we  say  they  are  identical  in  spite  of  considerable  in- 
dividual differences.  So  with  two  impressions  of  a 
print  from  the  same  plate ;  so  with  the  plate  itself, 
which  is  somewhat  modified  with  every  impression 
taken  from  it.  In  like  manner  "  identity  "  is  not  held 
to  its  strict  meaning — absolute  sameness — but  is  pre- 
dicated rightly  of  a  past  and  present  which  are  now 
very  widely  asunder,  provided  they  have  been  con- 
tinuously connected  by  links  so  small  as  not  to  give 
too  sudden  a  sense  of  change  at  any  one  point ;  as,  for 
instance,  in  the  case  of  the  Thames  at  Oxford  and 
Windsor  or  again  at  Greenwich,  we  say  the  same  river 
flows  by  all  three  places,  by  which  we  mean  that  much  of 
the  water  at  Greenwich  has  come  down  from  Oxford 
and  Windsor  in  a  continuous  stream.  How  sudden  a 
change  at  any  one  point,  or  how  great  a  difference 
between  the  two  extremes  is  sufficient  to  bar  identity, 
is  one  of  the  most  uncertain  things  imaginable,  and 
seems  to  be  decided  on  different  grounds  in  different 
cases,  sometimes  very  intelligibly,  and  again  at  others 
arbitrarily  and  capriciously. 


90  LIFE  AND  HABIT, 

Personal  identity  is  barred  at  one  end,  in  the  com- 
mon opinion,  by  birth,  and  at  the  other  by  death. 
Before  birth,  a  child  cannot  complain  either  by  himself 
or  another,  in  such  way  as  to  set  the  law  in  motion  ; 
after  death  he  is  in  like  manner  powerless  to  make 
himself  felt  by  society,  except  in  so  far  as  he  can  do 
so  by  acts  done  before  the  breath  has  left  his  body. 
At  any  point  between  birth  and  death  he  is  liable, 
either  by  himself  or  another,  to  affect  his  fellow-crea- 
tures ;  hence,  no  two  other  epochs  can  be  found  of 
equal  convenience  for  social  purposes,  and  therefore 
they  have  been  seized  by  society  as  settling  the  whole 
question  of  when  personal  identity  begins  and  ends — 
society  being  rightly  concerned  with  its  own  practical 
convenience,  rather  than  with  the  abstract  truth  con- 
cerning its  individual  members.  No  one  who  is  cap- 
able of  reflection  will  deny  that  the  limitation  of 
personality  is  certainly  arbitrary  to  a  degree  as  regards 
birth,  nor  yet  that  it  is  very  possibly  arbitrary  as  regards 
death  ;  and  as  for  intermediate  points,  no  doubt  it 
would  be  more  strictly  accurate  to  say,  "  you  are  the 
now  phase  of  the  person  I  met  last  night,"  or  "  you 
are  the  being  which  has  been  evolved  from  the  being 
I  met  last  night,"  than  "  you  are  the  person  I  met 
last  night."  But  life  is  too  short  for  the  peri- 
phrases which  would  crowd  upon  us  from  every  quarter, 
if  we  did  not  set  our  face  against  all  that  is  under  the 
surface  of  things,  unless,  that  is  to  say,  the  going 
beneath  the  surface  is,  for  some  special  chance  of  pro- 
fit, excusable  or  capable  of  extenuation. 


(9'  ) 


CHAPTER  VI. 

PERSONAL  IDENTITY — (continued). 

How  arbitrary  current  notions  concerning  identity 
really  are,  may  perhaps  be  perceived  by  reflecting  upon 
some  of  the  many  different  phases  of  reproduction. 

Direct  reproduction  in  which  a  creation  reproduces 
another,  the  facsimile,  or  nearly  so,  of  itself  may 
perhaps  occur  among  the  lowest  forms  of  animal  life ; 
but  it  is  certainly  not  the  rule  among  beings  of  a 
higher  order. 

A  hen  lays  an  egg,  which  egg  becomes  a  chicken, 
which  chicken,  in  the  course  of  time,  becomes  a  hen. 

A  moth  lays  an  egg,  which  egg  becomes  a  cater- 
pillar, which  caterpillar,  after  going  through  several 
stages,  becomes  a  chrysalis,  which  chrysalis  becomes 
a  moth. 

A  medusa  begets  a  ciliated  larva,  the  larva  begets  a 
polyp,  the  polyp  begets  a  strobila,  and  the  strobila 
begets  a  medusa  again ;  the  cycle  of  reproduction  being 
completed  in  the  fourth  generation. 

A  frog  lays  an  egg,  which  egg  becomes  a  tadpole ; 
the  tadpole,  after  more  or  fewer  intermediate  stages, 
becomes  a  frog. 


92  LIFE  AND  HABIT. 

The  mammals  lay  eggs,  which  they  hatch  inside 
their  own  bodies,  instead  of  outside  them ;  but  the 
difference  is  one  of  degree  and  not  of  kind.  In  all 
these  cases  how  difficult  is  it  to  say  where  identity 
begins  or  ends,  or  again  where  death  begins  or  ends, 
or  where  reproduction  begins  or  ends. 

How  small  and  unimportant  is  the  difference 
between  the  changes  which  a  caterpillar  undergoes 
before  becoming  a  moth,  and  those  of  a  strobila  before 
becoming  a  medusa.  Yet  in  the  one  case  we  say  the 
caterpillar  does  not  die,  but  is  changed  (though,  if  the 
various  changes  in  its  existence  be  produced  metageneti- 
cally,  as  is  the  case  with  many  insects,  it  would  appear 
to  make  a  clean  sweep  of  every  organ  of  its  exist- 
ence, and  start  de  now,  growing  a  head  where  its  feet 
were,  and  so  on — at  least  twice  between  its  lives  as 
caterpillar  and  butterfly) ;  in  this  case,  however,  wre  say 
the  caterpillar  does  not  die,  but  is  changed;  being, 
nevertheless,  one  personality  with  the  moth,  into  which 
it  is  developed.  But  in  the  case  of  the  strobila  we  say 
that  it  is  not  changed,  but  dies,  and  is  no  part  of  the 
personality  of  the  medusa. 

We  say  the  egg  becomes  the  caterpillar,  not  by  the 
death  of  the  egg  and  birth  of  the  caterpillar,  but  by 
the  ordinary  process  of  nutrition  and  waste — waste 
and  repair — waste  and  repair  continually.  In  like 
manner  we  say  the  caterpillar  becomes  the  chrysalis, 
and  the  chrysalis  the  moth,  not  through  the  death  of 
either  one  or  the  other,  but  by  the  development  of 
the  same  creature,  and  the  ordinary  processes  of  waste 
and  repair.  But  the  medusa  after  three  or  four  cycles 


PERSONAL  IDENTITY.  93 

becomes  the  medusa  again,  not,  we  say,  by  these  same 
processes  of  nutrition  and  waste,  but  by  a  series  of 
generations,  each  one  involving  an  actual  birth  and 
an  actual  death.  Why  this  difference  ?  Surely  only 
because  the  changes  in  the  offspring  of  the  medusa  are 
marked  by  the  leaving  a  little  more  husk  behind  them, 
and  that  husk  less  shrivelled,  than  is  left  on  the 
occasion  of  each  change  between  the  caterpillar  and 
the  butterfly.  A  little  more  residuum,  which  residuum, 
it  may  be,  can  move  about ;  and  though  shrivelling  from 
hour  to  hour,  may  yet  leave  a  little  more  offspring 
before  it  is  reduced  to  powder;  or  again,  perhaps,  be- 
cause in  the  one  case,  though  the  actors  are  changed, 
they  are  changed  behind  the  scenes,  and  come  on  in 
parts  and  dresses,  more  nearly  resembling  those  of  the 
original  actors,  than  in  the  other. 

When  the  caterpillar  emerges  from  the  egg,  almost 
all  that  was  inside  the  egg  has  become  caterpillar ;  the 
shell  is  nearly  empty,  and  cannot  move ;  therefore  we 
do  not  count  it,  and  call  the  caterpillar  a  continuation 
of  the  egg's  existence,  and  personally  identical  with 
the  egg.  So  with  the  chrysalis  and  the  moth;  but 
after  the  moth  has  laid  her  eggs  she  can  still  move  her 
wings  about,  and  she  looks  nearly  as  large  as  she  did 
before  she  laid  them ;  besides,  she  may  yet  lay  a  few 
more,  therefore  we  do  not  consider  the  moth's  life  as 
continued  in  the  life  of  her  eggs,  but  rather  in  their 
husk,  which  we  still  call  the  moth,  and  which  we  say 
dies  in  a  day  or  two,  and  there  is  an  end  of  it. 
Moreover,  if  we  hold  the  moth's  life  to  be  continued 
in  that  of  her  eggs,  we  shall  be  forced  to  admit  her 


94  LIFE  AND  HABIT. 

to  be  personally  identical  with  each  single  egg,  and, 
hence,  each  egg  to  be  identical  with  every  other  egg,  as 
far  as  the  past,  and  community  of  memories,  are  con- 
cerned ;  and  it  is  not  easy  at  first  to  break  the  spell 
which  words  have  cast  around  us,  and  to  feel  that  one 
person  may  become  many  persons,  and  that  many 
different  persons  may  be  practically  one  and  the  same 
person,  as  far  as  their  past  experience  is  concerned  ; 
and  again,  that  two  or  more  persons  may  unite  and 
become  one  person,  with  the  memories  and  experiences 
of  both,  though  this  has  been  actually  the  case  with 
every  one  of  us. 

Our  present  way  of  looking  at  these  matters  is 
perfectly  right  and  reasonable,  so  long  as  we  bear  in 
mind  that  it  is  a  fa$on  de  parlcr,  a  sort  of  hieroglyphic 
which  shall  stand  for  the  course  of  nature,  but  nothing 
more.  Repair  (as  is  now  universally  admitted  by 
physiologists)  is  only  a  phase  of  reproduction,  or 
rather  reproduction  and  repair  are  only  phases  of  the 
same  power ;  and  again,  death  and  the  ordinary  daily 
waste  of  tissue,  are  phases  of  the  same  thing.  As  for 
identity  it  is  determined  in  any  true  sense  of  the  word, 
not  by  death  alone,  but  by  a  combination  of  death  and 
failure  of  issue,  whether  of  mind  or  body. 

To  repeat.  Wherever  there  is  a  separate  centre  of 
thought  and  action,  we  see  that  it  is  connected  with 
its  successive  stages  of  being,  by  a  series  of  infinitely 
small  changes  from  moment  to  moment,  with,  perhaps, 
at  times  more  startling  and  rapid  changes,  but,  never- 
theless, with  no  such  sudden,  complete,  and  unrepaired 
break  up  of  the  preceding  condition,  as  we  shall  agree 


PERSONAL  IDENTITY.  95 

in  calling  death.  The  branching  out  from  it  at  differ- 
ent times  of  new  centres  of  thought  and  action,  has 
commonly  as  little  appreciable  effect  upon  the  parent- 
stock  as  the  fall  of  an  apple  full  of  ripe  seeds  has  upon 
an  apple-tree ;  and  though  the  life  of  the  parent,  from 
the  date  of  the  branching  off  of  such  personalities,  is 
more  truly  continued  in  these  than  in  the  residuum  of 
its  own  life,  we  should  find  ourselves  involved  in  a 
good  deal  of  trouble  if  we  were  commonly  to  take 
this  view  of  the  matter.  The  residuum  has  generally 
the  upper  hand.  He  has  more  money,  and  can  eat 
up  his  new  life  more  easily  than  his  new  life  him.  A 
moral  residuum  will  therefore  prefer  to  see  the  re- 
mainder of  his  life  in  his  own  person,  than  in  that  of 
his  descendants,  and  will  act  accordingly.  Hence  we, 
in  common  with  most  other  living  beings,  ignore  the 
offspring  as  forming  part  of  the  personality  of  the 
parent,  except  in  so  far  as  that  we  make  the  father 
liable  for  its  support  and  for  its  extravagances  (than 
which  no  greater  proof  need  be  wished  that  the  law  is 
at  heart  a  philosopher,  and  perceives  the  completeness 
of  the  personal  identity  between  father  and  son)  for 
twenty- one  years  from  birth.  In  other  respects  we 
are  accustomed,  probably  rather  from  considerations  of 
practical  convenience  than  as  the  result  of  pure  reason, 
to  ignore  the  identity  between  parent  and  offspring  as 
completely  as  we  ignore  personality  before  birth. 
With  these  exceptions,  however,  the  common  opinion 
concerning  personal  identity  is  reasonable  enough,  and 
is  found  to  consist  neither  in  consciousness  of  such 
identity,  nor  yet  in  the  power  of  recollecting  its 


96  LIFE  AND  HABIT. 

various  phases  (for  it  is  plain  that  identity  survives  the 
distinction  or  suspension  of  both  these),  but  in  the  fact 
that  the  various  stages  appear  to  the  majority  of  people 
to  have  been  in  some  way  or  other  linked  together. 

For  a  very  little  reflection  will  show  that  identity, 
as  commonly  predicated  of  living  agents,  does  not  con- 
sist in  identity  of  matter,  of  which  there  is  no  same 
particle  in  the  infant,  we  will  say,  and  the  octogenarian 
into  whom  he  has  developed.  Xor,  again,  does  it 
depend  upon  sameness  of  form  or  fashion ;  for  person- 
ality is  felt  to  survive  frequent  and  radical  modification 
of  structure,  as  in  the  case  of  caterpillars  and  other 
insects.  Mr.  Darwin,  quoting  from  Professor  Owen, 
tells  us  (Plants  and  Animals  under  Domestication, 
vol.  ii.  p.  362,  ed.  1875),  that  in  the  case  of  what 
is  called  metagenetic  development,  "  the  new  parts  are 
not  moulded  upon  the  inner  surfaces  of  the  old  ones. 
The  plastic  force  has  changed  its  mode  of  operation. 
The  outer  case,  and  all  that  gave  form  and  character  to 
the  precedent  individual,  perish,  and  are  cast  off ;  they 
are,  not  changed  into  the  corresponding  parts  of  the 
same  individual  These  are  due  to  a  new  and  distinct 
developmental  process."  Assuredly,  there  is  more 
birth  and  death  in  the  world  than  is  dreamt  of  by  the 
greater  part  of  us ;  but  it  is  so  masked,  and  on  the 
whole,  so  little  to  our  purpose,  that  we  fail  to  see  it. 
Yet  radical  and  sweeping  as  the  changes  of  organism 
above  described  must  be,  we  do  not  feel  them  to  be 
more  a  bar  to  personal  identity  than  the  considerable 
changes  which  take  place  in  the  structure  ot  our  own 
bodies  between  youth  and  old  age. 


PERSONAL  IDENTITY.  97 

Perhaps  the  most  striking  illustration  of  this  is  to 
be  found  in  the  case  of  some  Echinoderms,  con- 
cerning which  Mr.  Darwin  tells  us,  that  "  the  animal 
in  the  second  stage  of  development  is  formed  almost 
like  a  bud  within  the  animal  of  the  first  stage,  the 
latter  being  then  cast  off  like  an  old  vestment,  yet 
sometimes  maintaining  for  a  short  period  an  inde- 
pendent vitality"  ("  Plants  and  Animals  under  Domesti- 
cation," vol.  ii.  p.  362,  ed.  1875). 

K"or  yet  does  personality  depend  upon  any  con- 
sciousness or  sense  of  such  personality  on  the  part  of 
the  creature  itself — it  is  not  likely  that  the  moth  re- 
members having  been  a  caterpillar,  more  than  we  our- 
selves remember  having  been  children  of  a  day  old.  It 
depends  simply  upon  the  fact  that  the  various  phases 
of  existence  have  been  linked  together,  by  links  which 
we  agree  in  considering  sufficient  to  cause  identity, 
and  that  they  have  flowed  the  one  out  of  the  other  in 
what  we  see  as  a  continuous,  though  it  may  be  at  times,  a 
troubled  stream.  This  is  the  very  essence  of  personality, 
but  it  involves  the  probable  unity  of  all  animal  and 
vegetable  life,  as  being,  in  reality,  nothing  but  one 
single  creature,  of  which  the  component  members  are 
but,  as  it  were,  blood  corpuscles  or  individual  cells ; 
life  being  a  sort  of  leaven,  which,  if  once  introduced 
into  the  world,  will  leaven  it  altogether;  or  of  fire, 
which  will  consume  all  it  can  burn ;  or  of  air  or 
water,  which  will  turn  most  things  into  themselves. 
Indeed,  no  difficulty  would  probably  be  felt  about 
admitting  the  continued  existence  of  personal  identity 
between  parents  and  their  offspring  through  all  time 


98  LIFE  AND  HABIT. 

(there  being  no  sudden  break  at  any  time  between  the 
existence  of  any  maternal  parent  and  that  of  its 
offspring),  were  it  not  that  after  a  certain  time  the 
changes  in  outward  appearance  between  descendants 
and  ancestors  become  very  great,  the  two  seeming  to 
stand  so  far  apart,  that  it  seems  absurd  in  any  way 
to  say  that  they  are  one  and  the  same  being ;  much 
in  the  same  way  as  after  a  time — though  exactly  when 
no  one  can  say — the  Thames  becomes  the  sea.  More- 
over, the  separation  of  the  identity  is  practically  of 
far  greater  importance  to  it  than  its  continuance.  We 
want  to  be  ourselves ;  we  do  not  want  any  one  else  to 
claim  part  and  parcel  of  our  identity.  This  community 
of  identities  is  not  found  to  answer  in  everyday  life. 
When  then  our  love  of  independence  is  backed  up  by 
the  fact  that  continuity  of  life  between  parents  and 
offspring  is  a  matter  which  depends  on  things  which 
are  a  good  deal  hidden,  and  that  thus  birth  gives  us 
an  opportunity  of  pretending  that  there  has  been  a 
sudden  leap  into  a  separate  life ;  when  also  we  have 
regard  to  the  utter  ignorance  of  embryology,  which 
prevailed  till  quite  recently,  it  is  not  surprising  that 
our  ordinary  language  should  be  found  to  have  regard 
to  what  is  important  and  obvious,  rather  than  to  what 
is  not  quite  obvious,  and  is  quite  unimportant. 

Personality  is  the  creature  of  time  and  space, 
changing,  as  time  changes,  imperceptibly ;  we  are  there- 
fore driven  to  deal  with  it  as  with  all  continuous  and 
blending  things;  as  with  time,  for  example,  itself, 
which  we  divide  into  days,  and  seasons,  and  times,  and 
years,  into  divisions  that  are  often  arbitrary,  but  coin- 


PERSONAL  IDENTITY.  99 

cide,  on  the  whole,  as  nearly  as  we  can  make  them  do 
so,  with  the  more  marked  changes  which  we  can 
observe.  We  lay  hold,  in  fact,  of  anything  we  can 
catch ;  the  most  important  feature  in  any  existence  as 
regards  ourselves  being  that  which  we  can  best  lay 
hold  of,  rather  than  that  which  is  most  essential  to  the 
existence  itself.  "We  can  lay  hold  of  the  continued 
personality  of  the  egg  and  the  moth  into  which  the 
egg  develops,  but  it  is  less  easy  to  catch  sight  of  the 
continued  personality  between  the  moth  and  the  eggs 
which  she  lays ;  yet  the  one  continuation  of  personality 
is  just  as  true  and  free  from  quibble  as  the  other.  A 
moth  becomes  each  egg  that  she  lays,  and  that  she 
does  so,  she  will  in  good  time  show  by  doing,  now  that 
she  has  got  a  fresh  start,  as  near  as  may  be  what  she 
did  when  first  she  was  an  egg,  and  then  a  moth,  before ; 
and  this  I  take  it,  so  far  as  I  can  gather  from  looking 
at  life  and  things  generally,  she  would  not  be  able  to 
do  if  she  had  not  travelled  the  same  road  often  enough 
already,  to  be  able  to  know  it  in  her  sleep  and  blind- 
fold, that  is  to  say,  to  remember  it  without  any  con- 
scious act  of  memory. 

So  also  a  grain  of  wheat  is  linked  with  an  ear,  con- 
taining, we  will  say,  a  dozen  grains,  by  a  series  of 
changes  so  subtle  that  we  cannot  say  at  what  moment 
the  original  grain  became  the  blade,  nor  when  each  ear 
of  the  head  became  possessed  of  an  individual  centre 
of  action.  To  say  that  each  grain  of  the  head  is  per- 
sonally identical  with  the  original  grain  would  per- 
haps be  an  abuse  of  terms ;  but  it  can  be  no  abuse  to 
say  that  each  grain  is  a  continuation  of  the  personality 


ioo  LIFE  AND  HABIT. 

of  the  original  grain,  and  if  so,  of  every  grain  in  the 
chain  of  its  own  ancestry ;  and  that,  as  being  such  a 
continuation,  it  must  be  stored  with  the  memories 
and  experiences  of  its  past  existences,  to  be  recollected 
under  the  circumstances  most  favourable  to  recollec- 
tion, i.e.,  when  under  similar  conditions  to  those 
when  the  impression  was  last  made  and  last  remem- 
bered. Truly,  then,  in  each  case  the  new  egg  and  the 
new  grain  is  the  egg,  and  the  grain  from  which  its 
parent  sprang,  as  completely  as  the  full-grown  ox  is 
the  calf  from  which  it  has  grown. 

Again,  in  the  case  of  some  weeping  trees,  whose 
boughs  spring  up  into  fresh  trees  when  they  have 
reached  the  ground,  who  shall  say  at  what  time 
they  cease  to  be  members  of  the  parent  tree  ?  In  the 
case  of  cuttings  from  plants  it  is  easy  to  elude  the 
difficulty  by  making  a  parade  of  the  sharp  and  sudden 
act  of  separation  from  the  parent  stock,  but  this  is 
only  a  piece  of  mental  sleight  of  hand ;  the  cutting 
remains  as  much  part  of  its  parent  plant  as  though  it 
had  never  been  severed  from  it;  it  goes  on  profiting 
by  the  experience  which  it  had  before  it  was  cut  off, 
as  much  as  though  it  had  never  been  cut  off  at  all. 
This  will  be  more  readily  seen  in  the  case  of  worms 
which  have  been  cut  in  half.  Let  a  worm  be  cut  in 
half,  and  the  two  halves  will  become  fresh  worms; 
which  of  them  is  the  original  worm  ?  Surely  both. 
Perhaps  no  simpler  case  than  this  could  readily  be 
found  of  the  manner  in  which  personality  eludes  us, 
the  moment  we  try  to  investigate  its  real  nature. 
There  are  few  ideas  which  on  first  consideration  appear 


PERSONAL  IDENTITY,  101 

so  simple,  and  none  which  becomes  more  utterly  in- 
capable of  limitation  or  definition  as  soon  as  it  is 
examined  closely. 

Finally,  Mr.  Darwin  ("Plants  and  Animals  under 
Domestication,"  vol.  ii.  p.  38,  ed.  1875),  writes — 

"  Even  with  plants  multiplied  by  bulbs,  layers,  &c., 
which  may  in  one  sense  be  said  to  form  part  of  the 
same  individual,"  &c.,  &c. ;  and  again,  p.  5  8,  "  The 
same  rule  holds  good  with  plants  when  propagated  by 
bulbs,  offsets,  &c.,  which  in  one  sense  still  form  parts 
of  the  same  individual,"  &c.  In  each  of  these  passages 
it  is  plain  that  the  difficulty  of  separating  the  person- 
ality of  the  offspring  from  that  of  the  parent  plant  is 
present  to  his  mind.  Yet,  p.  351  of  the  same  volume 
as  above,  he  tells  us  that  asexual  generation  "is 
effected  in  many  ways — by  the  formation  of  buds  of 
various  kinds,  and  by  fissiparous  generation,  that  is,  by 
spontaneous  or  artificial  division."  The  multiplication 
of  plants  by  bulbs  and  layers  clearly  comes  under  this 
head,  nor  will  any  essential  difference  be  felt  between 
one  kind  of  asexual  generation  and  another;  if,  then, 
the  offspring  formed  by  bulbs  and  layers  is  in  one 
sense  part  of  the  original  plant,  so  also,  it  would 
appear,  is  all  offspring  developed  by  asexual  generation 
in  its  manifold  phrases. 

If  we  now  turn  to  p.  357,  we  find  the  conclusion 
arrived  at,  as  it  would  appear,  on  the  most  satisfactory 
evidence,  that  "sexual  and  asexual  reproduction  are 
not  seen  to  differ  essentially;  and  ....  that 
asexual  reproduction,  the  power  of  regrowth,  and 
development  are  all  parts  of  one  and  the  same  great 


102  LIFE  AND  HABIT. 

law."  Does  it  not  then  follow,  quite  reasonably  and 
necessarily,  that  all  offspring,  however  generated,  is  in 
one  sense  part  of  the  individuality  of  its  parent  or  parents. 
The  question,  therefore,  turns  upon  "  in  what  sense " 
this  may  be  said  to  be  the  case  ?  To  which  I  would 
venture  to  reply,  "In  the  same  sense  as  the  parent 
plant  (which  is  but  the  representative  of  the  outside 
matter  which  it  has  assimilated  during  growth,  and  of 
its  own  powers  of  development)  is  the  same  individual 
that  it  was  when  it  was  itself  an  offset,  or  a  cow  the 
same  individual  that  it  was  when  it  was  a  calf — but 
no  otherwise." 

Not  much  difficulty  will  be  felt  about  supposing  the 
offset  of  a  plant,  to  be  imbued  with  the  memory  of  the 
past  history  of  the  plant  of  which  it  is  an  offset.  It 
is  part  of  the  plant  itself,  and  will  know  whatever 
the  plant  knows.  "Why,  then,  should  there  be  more 
difficulty  in  supposing  the  offspring  of  the  highest 
mammals,  to  remember  in  a  profound  but  unself- 
conscious  way,  the  anterior  history  of  the  creatures  of 
which  they  too  have  been  part  and  parcel  ? 

Personal  identity,  then,  is  much  like  species  itself. 
It  is  now,  thanks  to  Mr.  Darwin,  generally  held  that 
species  blend  or  have  blended  into  one  another ;  so  that 
any  possibility  of  arrangement  and  apparent  sub- 
division into  definite  groups,  is  due  to  the  suppression 
by  death  both  of  individuals  and  whole  genera,  which, 
had  they  been  now  existing,  would  have  linked  all  liv- 
ing beings  by  a  series  of  gradations  so  subtle  that  little 
classification  could  have  been  attempted.  How  it  is 
that  the  one  great  personality  of  life  as  a  whole,  should 


PERSONAL  IDENTITY.  103 

have  split  itself  up  into  so  many  centres  of  thought 
and  action,  each  one  of  which  is  wholly,  or  at  any  rate 
nearly,  unconscious  of  its  connection  with  the  other 
members,  instead  of  having  grown  up  into  a  huge 
polyp,  or  as  it  were  coral  reef  or  compound  animal 
over  the  whole  world,  which  should  be  conscious  but 
of  its  own  one  single  existence ;  how  it  is  that  the 
daily  waste  of  this  creature  should  be  carried  on  by 
the  conscious  death  of  its  individual  members,  instead 
of  by  the  unconscious  waste  of  tissue  which  goes  on 
in  the  bodies  of  each  individual  (if  indeed  the  tissue 
which  we  waste  daily  in  our  own  bodies  is  so  uncon- 
scious of  its  birth  and  death  as  we  suppose) ;  how, 
again,  that  the  daily  repair  of  this  huge  creature  life 
should  have  become  decentralised,  and  be  carried  on 
by  conscious  reproduction  on  the  part  of  its  component 
items,  instead  of  by  the  unconscious  nutrition  of  the 
whole  from  a  single  centre,  as  the  nutrition  of  our  own 
bodies  would  appear  (though  perhaps  falsely)  to  be 
carried  on ;  these  are  matters  upon  which  I  dare  not 
speculate  here,  but  on  which  some  reflections  may 
follow  in  subsequent  chapters. 


CHAPTEE   VII. 

OUR    SUBORDINATE    PERSONALITIES. 

WE  have  seen  that  we  can  apprehend  neither  the  be- 
ginning nor  the  end  of  our  personality,  which  comes  up 
out  of  infinity  as  an  island  out  of  the  sea,  so  gently, 
that  none  can  say  when  it  is  first  visible  on  our 
mental  horizon,  and  fades  away  in  the  case  of  those 
who  leave  offspring,  so  imperceptibly  that  none  can 
say  when  it  is  out  of  sight.  But,  like  the  island, 
whether  we  can  see  it  or  no,  it  is  always  there.  Not 
only  are  we  infinite  as  regards  time,  but  we  are  so 
also  as  regards  extension,  being  so  linked  on  to  the 
external  world  that  we  cannot  say  where  we  either 
begin  or  end.  If  those  who  so  frequently  declare  that 
man  is  a  finite  creature  would  point  out  his  boun- 
daries, it  might  lead  to  a  better  understanding. 

Nevertheless,  we  are  in  the  habit  of  considering 
that  our  personality,  or  soul,  no  matter  where  it  begins 
or  ends,  and  no  matter  what  it  comprises,  is  neverthe- 
less a  single  thing,  uncompounded  of  other  souls.  Yet 
there  is  nothing  more  certain  than  that  this  is  not  at 
all  the  case,  but  that  every  individual  person  is  a  com- 
pound creature,  being  made  up  of  an  infinite  number 


OUR  SUBORDINATE  PERSONALITIES.       105 

of  distinct  centres  of  sensation  and  will,  each  one  of 
which  is  personal,  and  has  a  soul  and  individual  exist- 
ence, a  reproductive  system,  intelligence,  and  memory 
of  its  own,  with  probably  its  hopes  and  fears,  its  times 
of  scarcity  and  repletion,  and  a  strong  conviction  that 
it  is  itself  the  centre  of  the  universe. 

True,  no  one  is  aware  of  more  than  one  individu- 
ality in  his  own  person  at  one  time.  We  are,  indeed, 
often  greatly  influenced  by  other  people,  so  much  so, 
that  we  act  on  many  occasions  in  accordance  with  their 
will  rather  than  our  own,  making  our  actions  answer 
to  their  sensations,  and  register  the  conclusions  of  their 
cerebral  action  and  not  our  own ;  for  the  time  being, 
we  become  so  completely  part  of  them,  that  we  are 
ready  to  do  things  most  distasteful  and  dangerous  to 
us,  if  they  think  it  for  their  advantage  that  we  should 
do  so.  Thus  we  sometimes  see  people  become  mere 
processes  of  their  wives  or  nearest  relations.  Yet 
there  is  a  something  which  blinds  us,  so  that  we 
cannot  see  how  completely  we  are  possessed  by  the 
souls  which  influence  us  upon  these  occasions.  We 
still  think  we  are  ourselves,  and  ourselves  only,  and 
are  as  certain  as  we  can  be  of  any  fact,  that  we  are 
single  sentient  beings,  uncompounded  of  other  sentient 
beings,  and  that  our  action  is  determined  by  the  sole 
operation  of  a  single  will. 

But  in  reality,  over  and  above  this  possession  of 
our  souls  by  others  of  our  own  species,  the  will  of 
the  lower  animals  often  enters  into  our  bodies  and 
possesses  them,  making  us  do  as  they  will,  and  not 
as  we  will ;  as,  for  example,  when  people  try  to  drive 


io6  LIFE  AND  HABIT. 

pigs,  or  are  run  away  with  by  a  restive  horse,  or 
are  attacked  by  a  savage  animal  which  masters  them. 
It  is  absurd  to  say  that  a  person  is  a  single  "  ego  " 
when  he  is  in  the  clutches  of  a  lion.  Even  when  we 
are  alone,  and  uninfluenced  by  other  people  except 
in  so  far  as  we  remember  their  wishes,  we  yet 
generally  conform  to  the  usages  which  the  current 
feeling  of  our  peers  has  taught  us  to  respect ;  their 
will  having  so  mastered  our  original  nature,  that,  do 
what  we  may,  we  can  never  again  separate  ourselves 
and  dwell  in  the  isolation  of  our  own  single  person- 
ality. And  even  though  we  succeeded  in  this,  and 
made  a  clean  sweep  of  every  mental  influence  which 
had  ever  been  brought  to  bear  upon  us,  and  though  at 
the  same  time  we  were  alone  in  some  desert  where 
there  was  neither  beast  nor  bird  to  attract  our  attention 
or  in  any  way  influence  our  action,  yet  we  could  not 
escape  the  parasites  which  abound  within  us ;  whose 
action,  as  every  medical  man  well  knows,  is  often 
such  as  to  drive  men  to  the  commission  of  grave 
crimes,  or  to  throw  them  into  convulsions,  make 
lunatics  of  them,  kill  them — when  but  for  the  existence 
and  course  of  conduct  pursued  by  these  parasites  they 
would  have  done  no  wrong  to  any  man. 

These  parasites — are  they  part  of  us  or  no  ?  Some 
are  plainly  not  so  in  any  strict  sense  of  the  word,  yet 
their  action  may,  in  cases  which  it  is  unnecessary  to 
detail,  affect  us  so  powerfully  that  we  are  irresistibly 
impelled  to  act  in  such  or  such  a  manner ;  and  yet  we 
are  as  wholly  unconscious  of  any  impulse  outside  of  our 
own  "  ego "  as  though  they  were  part  of  ourselves ; 


OUR  SUBORDINATE  PERSONALITIES.       107 

others  again  are  essential  to  our  very  existence,  as  the 
corpuscles  of  the  blood,  which  the  best  authorities 
concur  in  supposing  to  be  composed  of  an  infinite 
number  of  living  souls,  on  whose  welfare  the  healthy 
condition  of  our  blood,  and  hence  of  our  whole  bodies, 
depends.  We  breathe  that  they  may  breathe,  not 
that  we  may  do  so ;  we  only  care  about  oxygen  in  so 
far  as  the  infinitely  small  beings  which  course  up  and 
down  in  our  veins  care  about  it :  the  whole  arrangement 
and  mechanism  of  our  lungs  may  be  our  doing,  but  is 
for  their  convenience,  and  they  only  serve  us  because 
it  suits  their  purpose  to  do  so,  as  long  as  we  serve 
them.  Who  shall  draw  the  line  between  the  parasites 
which  are  part  of  us,  and  the  parasites  which  are  not 
part  of  us  ?  Or  again,  between  the  influence  of  those 
parasites  which  are  within  us,  but  are  yet  not  us,  and 
the  external  influence  of  other  sentient  beings  and  our 
fellow-men  ?  There  is  no  line  possible.  Everything 
melts  away  into  everything  else;  there  are  no  hard 
edges ;  it  is  only  from  a  little  distance  that  we  see  the 
effect  as  of  individual  features  and  existences.  When 
we  go  close  up,  there  is  nothing  but  a  blur  and  con- 
fused mass  of  apparently  meaningless  touches,  as  in  a 
picture  by  Turner. 

The  following  passage  from  Mr.  Darwin's  provisional 
theory  of  Pangenesis,  will  sufficiently  show  that  the 
above  is  no  strange  and  paradoxical  view  put  forward 
wantonly,  but  that  it  follows  as  a  matter  of  course 
from  the  conclusions  arrived  at  by  those  who  are 
acknowledged  leaders  in  the  scientific  world.  Mr. 
Darwin  writes  thus: — 


108  LIFE  AND  HABIT. 

"  The  functional  independence  of  the  dements  or  units 
of  the  body. — Physiologists  agree  that  the  whole 
organism  consists  of  a  multitude  of  elemental  parts, 
which  are  to  a  great  extent  independent  of  one  another. 
Each  organ,  says  Claude  Bernard,  has  its  proper  life, 
its  autonomy;  it  can  develop  and  reproduce  itself 
independently  of  the  adjoining  tissues.  A  great 
German  authority,  Virchow,  asserts  still  more  emphati- 
cally that  each  system  consists  of  '  an  enormous  mass 

of  minute  centres  of  action Every  element  has 

its  own  special  action,  and  even  though  it  derive  its 
stimulus  to  activity  from  other  parts,  yet  alone  effects 

the  actual  performance  of  duties Every  single 

epithelial  and  muscular  fibre-cell  leads  a  sort  of 
parasitical  existence  in  relation  to  the  rest  of  the  body. 
.  .  .  Every  single  bone  corpuscle  really  possesses 
conditions  of  nutrition  peculiar  to  itself.'  Eacli 
element,  as  Sir  J.  Paget  remarks,  lives  its  appointed 
time,  and  then  dies,  and  is  replaced  after  being  cast 
off  and  absorbed.  I  presume  that  no  physiologist 
doubts  that,  for  instance,  each  bone  corpuscle  of  the 
finger  differs  from  the  corresponding  corpuscle  of  the 
corresponding  joint  of  the  toe,"  &c.,  &c.  ("  Plants  and 
Animals  under  Domestication,"  vol.  ii.  pp.  364,  365, 
ed.  1875). 

In  a  work  on  heredity  by  M.  Eibot,  I  find  him  say- 
ing, "  Some  recent  authors  attribute  a  memory "  (and 
if  so,  surely  every  attribute  of  complete  individuality) 
"to  every  organic  element  of  the  body;"  among  them 
Dr.  Maudsley,  who  is  quoted  by  M.  Ribot,  as  saying, 
"  The  permanent  effects  of  a  particular  virus,  such  as 


OUR  SUBORDINATE  PERSONALITIES.       109 

that  of  the  variola,  in  the  constitution,  shows  that  the 
organic  element  remembers  for  the  remainder  of  its  life 
certain  modifications  it  has  received.  The  manner  in 
which  a  cicatrix  in  a  child's  finger  grows  with  the 
growth  of  the  body,  proves,  as  has  been  shown  by 
Paget,  that  the  organic  element  of  the  part  does  not 
forget  the  impression  it  has  received.  What  has  been 
said  about  the  different  nervous  centres  of  the  body 
demonstrates  the  existence  of  a  memory  in  the  nerve 
cells  diffused  through  the  heart  and  intestines ;  in 
those  of  the  spinal  cord,  in  the  cells  of  the  motor 
ganglia,  and  in  the  cells  of  the  cortical  substance  of 
the  cerebal  hemispheres." 

Now,  if  words  have  any  meaning  at  all,  it  must 
follow  from  the  passages  quoted  above,  that  each  cell 
in  the  human  body  is  a  person  with  an  intelligent  soul, 
of  a  low  class,  perhaps,  but  still  differing  from  our 
own  more  complex  soul  in  degree,  and  not  in  kind ; 
and,  like  ourselves,  being  born,  living,  and  dying.  So 
that  each  single  creature,  whether  man  or  beast,  proves 
to  be  as  a  ray  of  white  light,  which,  though  single,  is 
compounded  of  the  red,  blue,  and  yellow  rays.  It 
would  appear,  then,  as  though  "  we,"  "  our  souls,"  or 
"selves,"  or  "personalities,"  or  by  whatever  name  we  may 
prefer  to  be  called,  are  but  the  consensus  and  full  flowing 
stream  of  countless  sensations  and  impulses  on  the 
part  of  our  tributary  souls  or  "  selves,"  who  probably 
know  no  more  that  we  exist,  and  that  they  exist  as 
part  of  us,  than  a  microscopic  water-flea  knows  the 
results  of  spectrum  analysis,  or  than  an  agricultural 
labourer  knows  the  working  of  the  British  constitution : 


no  LIFE  AND  HABIT. 

and  of  whom  we  know  no  more,  until  some  miscon- 
duct on  our  part,  or  some  confusion  of  ideas  on  theirs, 
has  driven  them  into  insurrection,  than  we  do  of  the 
habits  and  feelings  of  some  class  widely  separated 
from  our  own. 

These  component  souls  are  of  many  and  very  dif- 
ferent natures,  living  in  territories  which  are  to  them 
vast  continents,  and  rivers,  and  seas,  but  which  are  yet 
only  the  bodies  of  our  other  component  souls ;  coral  reefs 
and  sponge-beds  within  us ;  the  animal  itself  being  a 
kind  of  mean  proportional  between  its  house  and  its 
soul,  and  none  being  able  to  say  where  house  ends  and 
animal  begins,  more  than  they  can  say  where  animal 
ends  and  soul  begins.  For  our  bones  within  us  are 
but  inside  walls  and  buttresses,  that  is  to  say,  houses 
constructed  of  lime  and  stone,  as  it  were,  by  coral 
insects ;  and  our  houses  without  us  are  but  outside 
bones,  a  kind  of  exterior  skeleton  or  shell,  so  that  we 
perish  of  cold  if  permanently  and  suddenly  deprived 
of  the  coverings  which  warm  us  and  cherish  us,  as  the 
wing  of  a  hen  cherishes  her  chickens.  If  we  consider 
the  shells  of  many  living  creatures,  we  shall  find  it 
hard  to  say  whether  they  are  rather  houses,  or  part  of 
the  animal  itself,  being,  as  they  are,  inseparable  from 
the  animal,  without  the  destruction  of  its  personality. 

Is  it  possible,  then,  to  avoid  imagining  that  if  we 
have  within  us  so  many  tributary  souls,  so  utterly  dif- 
ferent from  the  soul  which  they  unite  to  form,  that 
they  neither  can  perceive  us,  nor  we  them,  though  it 
is  in  us  that  they  live  and  move  and  have  their  being, 
and  though  we  are  what  we  are,  solely  as  the  result  of 


O UR  SUBORDINA  TE  PERSONALITIES.       1 1 1 

their  co-operation — is  it  possible  to  avoid  imagining 
that  we  may  be  ourselves  atoms,  undesignedly  combin- 
ing to  form  some  vaster  being,  though  we  are  utterly 
incapable  of  perceiving  that  any  such  being  exists,  or 
of  realising  the  scheme  or  scope  of  our  own  combination? 
And  this,  too,  not  a  spiritual  being,  which,  without 
matter,  or  what  we  think  matter  of  some  sort,  is  as 
complete  nonsense  to  us  as  though  men  bade  us  love  and 
lean  upon  an  intelligent  vacuum,  but  a  being  with  what 
is  virtually  flesh  and  blood  and  bones  ;  with  organs, 
senses,  dimensions,  in  some  way  analogous  to  our  own, 
into  some  other  part  of  which  being,  at  the  time  of 
our  great  change  we  must  infallibly  re-enter,  starting 
clean  anew,  with  bygones  bygones,  and  no  more 
ache  for  ever  from  either  age  or  antecedents.  Truly, 
sufficient  for  the  life  is  the  evil  thereof.  Any  specula- 
tions of  ours  concerning  the  nature  of  such  a  being, 
must  be  as  futile  and  little  valuable  as  those  of  a 
blood  corpuscle  might  be  expected  to  be  concerning 
the  nature  of  man  ;  but  if  I  were  myself  a  blood  cor- 
puscle, I  should  be  amused  at  making  the  discovery 
that  I  was  not  only  enjoying  life  in  my  own  sphere, 
but  was  bond  fide  part  of  an  animal  which  would  not  die 
with  myself,  and  in  which  I  might  thus  think  of  my- 
self as  continuing  to  live  to  all  eternity,  or  to  what,  as 
far  as  my  power  of  thought  would  carry  me,  must 
seem  practically  eternal.  But,  after  all,  the  amusement 
would  be  of  a  rather  dreary  nature. 

On  the  other  hand,  if  I  were  the  being  of  whom 
such  an  introspective  blood  corpuscle  was  a  component 
item,  I  should  conceive  he  served  me  better  by 


112  LIFE  AND  HABIT. 

attending  to  my  blood  and  making  himself  a  successful 
corpuscle,  than  by  speculating  about  my  nature.  He 
would  serve  me  best  by  serving  himself  best,  without 
being  over  curious.  I  should  expect  that  my  blood 
might  suffer  if  his  brain  were  to  become  too  active. 
If,  therefore,  I  could  discover  the  vein  in  which  he  was,  I 
should  let  him  out  to  begin  life  anew  in  some  other 
and,  qud  me,  more  profitable  capacity. 

With  the  units  of  our  bodies  it  is  as  with  the  stars 
of  heaven :  there  is  neither  speech  nor  language,  but 
their  voices  are  heard  among  them.  Our  will  is  the 
fiat  of  their  collective  wisdom,  as  sanctioned  in  their 
parliament,  the  brain;  it  is  they  who  make  us  do 
whatever  we  do — it  is  they  who  should  be  rewarded 
if  they  have  done  well,  or  hanged  if  they  have  com- 
mitted murder.  When  the  balance  of  power  is  well 
preserved  among  them,  when  they  respect  each  other's 
rights  and  work  harmoniously  together,  then  we  thrive 
and  are  well;  if  we  are  ill,  it  is  because  they  are 
quarrelling  with  themselves,  or  are  gone  on  strike  for 
this  or  that  addition  to  their  environment,  and  our 
doctor  must  pacify  or  chastise  them  as  best  he  may. 
They  are  we  and  we  are  they  ;  and  when  we  die  it  is 
but  a  redistribution  of  the  balance  of  power  among 
them  or  a  change  of  dynasty,  the  result,  it  may  be,  of 
heroic  struggle,  with  more  epics  and  love  romances  than 
we  could  read  from  now  to  the  Millennium,  if  they 
were  so  written  down  that  we  could  comprehend 
them. 

It  is  plain,  then,  that  the  more  we  examine  the 
question  of  personality  the  more  it  baffles  us,  the  only 


OUR  SUBORDINATE  PERSONALITIES.       113 

safeguard  against  utter  confusion  and  idleness  of 
thought  being  to  fall  back  upon  the  superficial  and 
common  sense  view,  and  refuse  to  tolerate  discussions 
which  seem  to  hold  out  little  prospect  of  commercial 
value,  and  which  would  compel  us,  if  logically  followed, 
to  be  at  the  inconvenience  of  altering  our  opinions 
upon  matters  which  we  have  come  to  consider  as 
settled. 

And  we  observe  that  this  is  what  is  practically  done 
by  some  of  our  ablest  philosophers,  who  seem  un- 
willing, if  one  may  say  so  without  presumption,  to 
accept  the  conclusions  to  which  their  own  experiments 
and  observations  would  seem  to  point. 

Dr.  Carpenter,  for  example,  quotes  the  well-known 
experiments  upon  headless  frogs.  If  we  cut  off  a 
frog's  head  and  pinch  any  part  of  its  skin,  the  animal 
at  once  begins  to  move  away  with  the  same  regularity 
as  though  the  brain  had  not  been  removed.  Flourens 
took  guinea-pigs,  deprived  them  of  the  cerebral  lobes, 
and  then  irritated  their  skin ;  the  animals  immediately 
walked,  leaped,  and  trotted  about,  but  when  the 
irritation  was  discontinued  they  ceased  to  move. 
Headless  birds,  under  excitation,  can  still  perform 
with  their  wings  the  rhythmic  movements  of  flying. 
But  here  are  some  facts  more  curious  still,  and  more 
difficult  of  explanation.  If  we  take  a  frog  or  a  strong 
and  healthy  triton,  and  subject  it  to  various  experi- 
ments ;  if  we  touch,  pinch,  or  burn  it  with  acetic  acid, 
and  if  then,  after  decapitating  the  animal,  we  subject 
it  to  the  same  experiments,  it  will  be  seen  that  the 
reactions  are  exactly  the  same ;  it  will  strive  to  be 


Ii4  LIFE  AND  HABIT. 

free  of  the  pain,  and  to  shake  off  the  acetic  acid  that  is 
burning  it ;  it  will  bring  its  foot  up  to  the  part  of  its 
body  that  is  irritated,  and  this  movement  of  the 
member  will  follow  the  irritation  wherever  it  may  be 
produced. 

The  above  is  mainly  taken  from  M.  Eibot's  work 
on  heredity  rather  than  Dr.  Carpenter's,  because  M. 
Ribot  tells  us  that  the  head  of  the  frog  was  actually 
cut  off,  a  fact  which  does  not  appear  so  plainly  in 
Dr.  Carpenter's  allusion  to  the  same  experiments. 
But  Dr.  Carpenter  tells  us  that  after  the  brain  of  a 
frog  has  been  removed — which  would  seem  to  be  much 
the  same  thing  as  though  its  head  were  cut  off — "  if 
acetic  acid  be  applied  over  the  upper  and  under  part 
of  the  thigh,  the  foot  of  the  -same  side  will  wipe  it 
away;  but  if  that  foot  be  cut  off,  after  some  ineffectual 
efforts  and  a  short  period  of  inaction,"  during  which  it 
is  hard  not  to  surmise  that  the  headless  body  is  con- 
sidering what  it  had  better  do  under  the  circumstances, 
"  the  same  movement  will  be  made  by  the  foot  of  the 
opposite  side"  which,  to  ordinary  people,  would  convey 
the  impression  that  the  headless  body  was  capable  of 
feeling  the  impressions  it  had  received,  and  of  reason- 
ing upon  them  by  a  psychological  act;  and  this  of 
course  involves  the  possession  of  a  soul  of  some 
sort. 

Here  is  a  frog  whose  right  thigh  you  burn  with 
acetic  acid.  Very  naturally  it  tries  to  get  at  the  place 
with  its  right  foot  to  remove  the  acid.  You  then  cut 
off  the  frog's  head,  and  put  more  acetic  acid  on  the 
same  place  :  the  headless  frog,  or  rather  the  body  of 


OUR  SUBORDINA  TE  PERSONALITIES.        1 1 5 

the  late  frog,  does  just  what  the  frog  did  before  its 
head  was  cut  off — it  tries  to  get  at  the  place  with  ita 
right  foot.  You  now  cut  off  its  right  foot :  the  head- 
less body  deliberates,  and  after  a  while  tries  to  do 
with  its  left  foot  what  it  can  no  longer  do  with  its 
right.  Plain  matter-of-fact  people  will  draw  their  own 
inference.  They  will  not  be  seduced  from  the  super- 
ficial view  of  the  matter.  They  will  say  that  the 
headless  body  can  still,  to  some  extent,  feel,  think, 
and  act,  and  if  so,  that  it  must  have  a  living  soul. 

Dr.  Carpenter  writes  as  follows  : — "  Now  the  per- 
formance of  these,  as  well  as  of  many  other  movements, 
that  show  a  most  remarkable  adaptation  to  a  purpose, 
might  be  supposed  to  indicate  that  sensations  are 
called  up  by  the  impressions,  and  that  the  animal  can 
not  only/te/,  but  can  voluntarily  direct  its  movements 
so  as  to  get  rid  of  the  irritation  which  annoys  it. 
But  such  an  inference  would  be  inconsistent  with 
other  facts.  In  the  first  place,  the  motions  performed 
under  such  circumstances  are  never  spontaneous,  but 
are  always  excited  by  a  stimulus  of  some  kind." 

Here  we  pause  to  ask  ourselves  whether  any  action 
of  any  creature  under  any  circumstances  is  ever  ex- 
cited without  "  stimulus  of  some  kind,"  and  unless  we 
can  answer  this  question  in  the  affirmative,  it  is  not 
easy  to  see  how  Dr.  Carpenter's  objection  is  valid. 

"  Thus,"  he  continues,  "  a  decapitated  frog  "  (here 
then  we  have  it  that  the  frog's  head  was  actually  cut 
off)  "  after  the  first  violent  convulsive  moments  occa- 
sioned by  the  operation  have  passed  away,  remains  at 
rest  until  it  is  touched ;  and  then  the  leg,  or  its  whole 


1 16  LIFE  AND  HABIT. 

body  may  be  thrown  into  sudden  action,  which  sud- 
denly subsides  again."  (How  does  this  quiescence 
when  it  no  longer  feels  anything  show  that  the  "  leg 
or  whole  body"  had  not  perceived  something  which 
made  it  feel  when  it  was  not  quiescent  ?) — "  Again  we 
find  that  such  movements  may  be  performed  not  only 
when  the  brain  has  been  removed,  the  spinal  cord 
remaining  entire,  but  also  when  the  spinal  cord  has 
been  itself  cut  across,  so  as  to  be  divided  into  two  or 
more  portions,  each  of  them  completely  isolated  from 
each  other,  and  from  other  parts  of  the  nervous  centres. 
Thus,  if  the  head  of  a  frog  be  cut  off,  and  its  spinal 
cord  be  divided  in  the  middle  of  the  back,  so  that  its 
fore  legs  remain  connected  with  the  upper  part,  and 
its  hind  legs  with  the  lower,  each  pair  of  members 
may  be  excited  to  movements  by  stimulants  applied 
to  itself ;  but  the  two  pairs  will  not  exhibit  any  con- 
sentaneous motions,  as  they  will  do  when  the  spinal 
cord  is  undivided." 

This  may  be  put  perhaps  more  plainly  thus.  If 
you  take  a  frog  and  cut  it  into  three  pieces — say,  the 
head  for  -one  piece,  the  fore  legs  and  shoulder  for 
another,  and  the  hind  legs  for  a.  third — and  then  irritate 
any  one  of  these  pieces,  you  will  find  it  move  much  as 
it  would  have  moved  under  like  irritation  if  the  animal 
had  remained  undivided,  but  you  will  no  longer  find 
any  concert  between  the  movements  of  the  three 
pieces ;  that  is  to  say,  if  you  irritate  the  head,  the 
other  two  pieces  will  remain  quiet,  and  if  you  irritate 
the  hind  legs,  you  will  excite  no  action  in  the  fore  legs 
or  head. 


O  UR  SUBORDINA  TE  PERSONALITIES.       I  \  7 

Dr.  Carpenter  continues :  "  Or  if  the  spinal  cord  be 
cut  across  without  the  removal  of  the  brain,  the  lower 
limbs  may  be  excited  to  movement  by  an  appropriate 
stimulant,  though  the  animal  has  clearly  no  power 
over  them,  whilst  the  upper  part  remains  under  its 
control  as  completely  as  before." 

Why  are  the  head  and  shoulders  "  the  animal "  more 
than  the  hind  legs  under  these  circumstances  ?  Neither 
half  can  exist  long  without  the  other ;  the  two  parts, 
therefore,  being  equally  important  to  each  other,  we 
have  surely  as  good  a  right  to  claim  the  title  of  "  the 
animal "  for  the  hind  legs,  and  to  maintain  that  they 
have  no  power  over  the  head  and  shoulders,  as  any 
one  else  has  to  claim  the  animalship  for  these  last. 
What  we  say  is,  that  the  animal  has  ceased  to  exist  as 
a  frog  on  being  cut  in  half,  and  that  the  two  halves 
are  no  longer,  either  of  them,  the  frog,  but  are  simply 
pieces  of  still  living  organism,  each  of  which  has  a 
soul  of  its  own,  being  capable  of  sensation,  and  of 
intelligent  psychological  action  as  the  consequence  of 
its  sensations,  though  the  one  part  has  probably  a 
much  higher  and  more  intelligent  soul  than  the  other, 
and  neither  part  has  a  soul  for  a  moment  comparable 
in  power  and  durability  to  that  of  the  original  frog. 

"Now  it  is  scarcely  conceivable,"  continues  Dr 
Carpenter,  "  that  in  this  last  case  sensations  should  be 
felt  and  volition  exercised  through  the  instrumentality 
of  that  portion  of  the  spinal  cord  which  remains  con- 
nected with  the  nerves  of  the  posterior  extremities, 
but  which  is  cut  off  from  the  brain.  For  if  it  were  so, 
there  must  be  two  distinct  centres  of  sensation  and 


n8  LIFE  AND  HABIT. 

will  in  the  same  animal,  the  attributes  of  the  brain 
not  being  affected ;  and  by  dividing  the  spinal  cord  into 
two  or  more  segments  we  might  thus  create  in  the  body 
of  one  animal  two  or  more  such  independent  centres 
in  addition  to  that  which  holds  its  proper  place  in  the 
head." 

In  the  face  of  the  facts  before  us,  it  does  not  seem 
far-fetched  to  suppose  that  there  are  two,  or  indeed  an 
infinite  number  of  centres  of  sensation  and  will  in  an 
animal,  the  attributes  of  whose  brain  are  not  affected, 
but  that  these  centres,  while  the  brain  is  intact, 
habitually  act  in  connection  with  and  in  subordination 
to  that  central  authority ;  as  in  the  ordinary  state  of 
the  fish  trade,  fish  is  caught,  we  will  say,  at  Yarmouth, 
sent  up  to  London,  and  then  sent  down  to  Yarmouth 
again  to  be  eaten,  instead  of  being  eaten  at  Yarmouth 
when  caught.  But  from  the  phenomena  exhibited  by 
three  pieces  of  an  animal,  it  is  impossible  to  argue 
that  the  causes  of  the  phenomena  were  present  in  the 
quondam  animal  itself;  the  memory  of  an  infinite 
series  of  generations  having  so  habituated  the  local 
centres  of  sensation  and  will,  to  act  in  concert  with 
the  central  government,  that  as  long  as  they  can  get 
at  that  government,  they  are  absolutely  incapable  of 
acting  independently.  When  thrown  on  their  own 
resources,  they  are  so  demoralised  by  ages  of  depend- 
ence on  the  brain,  that  they  die  after  a  few  efforts 
at  self-assertion,  from  sheer  unfamiliarity  with  the 
position,  and  inability  to  recognise  themselves  when 
disjointed  rudely  from  their  habitual  associations. 

In  conclusion,  Dr.  Carpenter  says,  "  To  say  that  two 


OUR  SUBORDINATE  PERSONALITIES.       119 

or  more  distinct  centres  of  sensation  and  will  are 
present  in  such  a  case,  would  really  be  the  same  as  say- 
ing that  we  have  the  power  of  constituting  two  or  more 
distinct  egos  in  one  body,  which  is  manifestly  absurd." 
One  sees  the  absurdity  of  maintaining  that  we  can 
make  one  frog  into  two  frogs  by  cutting  a  frog  into 
two  pieces,  but  there  is  no  absurdity  in  believing  that 
the  two  pieces  have  minor  centres  of  sensation  and 
intelligence  within  themselves,  which,  when  the  animal 
is  entire,  act  in  such  concert  with  the  brain,  and  with 
each  other,  that  it  is  not  easy  to  detect  their  originally 
autonomous  character,  but  which,  when  deprived  of 
their  power  of  acting  in  concert,  are  thrown  back  upon 
earlier  habit,  now  too  long  forgotten  to  be  capable  of 
permanent  resumption. 

Illustrations  are  apt  to  mislead,  nevertheless  they 
may  perhaps  be  sometimes  tolerated.  Suppose,  for 
example,  that  London  to  the  extent,  say,  of  a  circle 
with  a  six-mile  radius  from  Charing  Cross,  were 
utterly  annihilated  in  the  space  of  five  minutes  during 
the  Session  of  Parliament.  Suppose,  also,  that  two 
entirely  impassable  barriers,  say  of  five  miles  in 
width,  half  a  mile  high,  and  red  hot,  were  thrown 
across  England ;  one  from  Gloucester  to  Harwich,  and 
another  from  Liverpool  to  Hull,  and  at  the  same  time 
the  sea  were  to  become  a  mass  of  molten  lava,  so  that 
no  water  communication  should  be  possible ;  the  poli- 
tical, mercantile,  social,  and  intellectual  life  of  the 
country  would  be  convulsed  in  a  manner  which  it  is 
hardly  possible  to  realise.  Hundreds  of  thousands 
would  die  through  the  dislocation  of  existing  arrange- 


I2o  LIFE  AND  HABIT. 

ments.  Nevertheless,  each  of  the  three  parts  into 
which  England  was  divided  would  show  signs  of 
provincial  life  for  which  it  would  find  certain  imperfect 
organisms  ready  to  hand.  Bristol,  Birmingham,  Liver- 
pool, and  Manchester,  accustomed  though  they  are  to 
act  in  subordination  to  London,  would  probably  take  up 
the  reins  of  government  in  their  several  sections ;  they 
would  make  their  town  councils  into  local  govern- 
ments, appoint  judges  from  the  ablest  of  their  magis- 
trates, organise  relief  committees,  and  endeavour  as 
well  as  they  could  to  remove  any  acetic  acid  that 
might  be  now  poured  on  Wiltshire,  Warwickshire,  or 
Northumberland,  but  no  concert  between  the  three 
divisions  of  the  country  would  be  any  longer  possible. 
Should  we  be  justified,  under  these  circumstances,  in 
calling  any  of  the  three  parts  of  England,  England  ? 
Or,  again,  when  we  observed  the  provincial  action  to 
be  as  nearly  like  that  of  the  original  undivided  nation 
as  circumstances  would  allow,  should  we  be  justified  in 
saying  that  the  action,  such  as  it  was,  was  not  politi- 
cal ?  And,  lastly,  should  we  for  a  moment  think  that 
an  admission  that  the  provincial  action  was  of  a  bond 
fide  political  character  would  involve  the  supposition 
that  England,  undivided,  had  more  than  one  "  ego  "  as 
England,  no  matter  how  many  subordinate  "egos" 
might  go  to  the  making  of  it,  each  one  of  which 
proved,  on  emergency,  to  be  capable  of  a  feeble 
autonomy  ? 

M.  Ribot  would  seem  to  take  a  juster  view  of  the 
phenomenon  when  he  says  (p.  222  of  the  English 
translation) — 


OUR  SUBORDINATE  PERSONALITIES.       121 

"  We  can  hardly  say  that  here  the  movements  are 
co-ordinated  like  those  of  a  machine;  the  acts  of  the 
animal  are  adapted  to  a  special  end ;  we  find  in  them 
the  characters  of  intelligence  and  will,  a  knowledge 
and  choice  of  means,  since  they  are  as  variable  as  the 
cause  which  provokes  them. 

"  If  these,  then,  and  similar  acts,  were  such  that  both 
the  impressions  which  produced  them  and  the  acts 
themselves  were  perceived  by  the  animal,  would  they 
not  be  called  psychological?  Is  there  not  in  them  all 
that  constitutes  an  intelligent  act — adaptation  of  means 
to  ends ;  not  a  general  and  vague  adaptation,  but  a 
determinate  adaptation  to  a  determinate  end  ?  In  the 
reflex  action  we  find  all  that  constitutes  in  some  sort 
the  very  groundwork  of  an  intelligent  act — that  is  to 
say,  the  same  series  of  stages,  in  the  same  order,  with 
the  same  relations  between  them.  We  have  thus,  in 
the  reflex  act,  all  that  constitutes  the  psychological  act 
except  consciousness.  The  reflex  act,  which  is  physio- 
logical, differs  in  nothing  from  the  psychological 
act,  save  only  in  this — that  it  is  without  conscious- 
ness." 

The  only  remark  which  suggests  itself  upon  this,  is 
that  we  have  no  right  to  say  that  the  part  of  the 
animal  which  moves  does  not  also  perceive  its  own 
act  of  motion,  as  much  as  it  has  perceived  the  im- 
pression which  has  caused  it  to  move.  It  is  plain 
"  the  animal  "  cannot  do  so,  for  the  animal  cannot  be 
said  to  be  any  longer  in  existence.  Half  a  frog  is  not 
a  frog ;  nevertheless,  if  the  hind  legs  are  capable,  as 
M.  Ribot  appears  to  admit,  of  "perceiving  the  im- 


T22  LIFE  AND  HABIT. 

pression  "  which  produces  their  action,  and  if  in  that 
action  there  is  (and  there  would  certainly  appear  to  be 
so)  "  all  that  constitutes  an  intelligent  act,  ...  a 
determinate  adaptation  to  a  determinate  end,"  one  fails 
to  see  on  what  ground  they  should  be  supposed  to  be 
incapable  of  perceiving  their  own  action,  in  which 
case  the  action  of  the  hind  legs  becomes  distinctly 
psychological. 

Secondly,  M.  Eibot  appears  to  forget  that  it  is  the 
tendency  of  all  psychological  action  to  become  uncon- 
scious on  being  frequently  repeated,  and  that  no  line 
can  be  drawn  between  psychological  acts  and  those 
reflex  acts  which  he  calls  physiological.  All  we  can 
say  is,  that  there  are  acts  which  we  do  without  know- 
ing that  we  do  them ;  but  the  analogy  of  many  habits 
which  we  have  been  able  to  watch  in  their  passage 
from  laborious  consciousness  to  perfect  unconscious- 
ness, would  suggest  that  all  action  is  really  psycho- 
logical, only  that  the  soul's  action  becomes  invisible 
to  ourselves  after  it  has  been  repeated  sufficiently 
often — that  there  is,  in  fact,  a  law  as  simple  as  in  the 
case  of  optics  or  gravitation,  whereby  conscious  per- 
ception of  any  action  shall  vary  inversely  as  the 
square,  say,  of  its  being  repeated. 

It  is  easy  to  understand  the  advantage  to  the  in- 
dividual of  this  power  of  doing  things  rightly  Without 
thinking  about  them ;  for  were  there  no  such  power, 
the  attention  would  be  incapable  of  following  the 
multitude  of  matters  which  would  be  continually  arrest- 
ing it ;  those  animals  which  had  developed  a  power 
oi  working  automatically,  and  without  a  recurrence  to 


OUR  SUBORDINATE  PERSONALITIES.       123 

first  principles  when  they  had  once  mastered  any  par- 
ticular process,  would,  in  the  common  course  of  events, 
stand  a  better  chance  of  continuing  their  species,  and 
thus  of  transmitting  their  new  power  to  their  de- 
scendants. 

M.  Ribot  declines  to  pursue  the  subject  further, 
and  has  only  cursorily  alluded  to  it.  He  writes,  how- 
ever, that,  on  the  "obscure  problem"  of  the  difference 
between  reflex  and  psychological  actions,  some  say, 
"  when  there  can  be  no  consciousness,  because  the 
brain  is  wanting,  there  is,  in  spite  of  appearances,  only 
mechanism,"  whilst  others  maintain,  that  "  when  there 
is  selection,  reflection,  psychical  action,  there  must 
also  be  consciousness  in  spite  of  appearances."  A 
little  later  (p.  223),  he  says,  "  It  is  quite  possible  that 
if  a  headless  animal  could  live  a  sufficient  length  of 
time "  (that  is  to  say,  if  the  hind  legs  of  an  animal 
could  live  a  sufficient  length  of  time  without  the 
brain),  "  there  would  be  found  in  it"  (them)  "a  conscious- 
ness like  that  of  the  lower  species,  which  would 
consist  merely  in  the  faculty  of  apprehending  the 
external  world."  (Why  merely  ?  It  is  more  than 
apprehending  the  outside  world  to  be  able  to  try  to 
do  a  thing  with  one's  left  foot,  when  one  finds  that  one 
cannot  do  it  with  one's  right.)  "  It  would  not  be 
correct  to  say  that  the  amphioxus,  the  only  one  among 
fishes  and  vertebrata  which  has  a  spinal  cord  without 
a  brain,  has  no  consciousness  because  it  has  no  brain ; 
and  if  it  be  admitted  that  the  little  ganglia  of  the 
invertebrata  can  form  a  consciousness,  the  same  may 
hold  good  for  the  spinal  cord." 


124  LIFE  AND  HABIT. 

We  conclude,  therefore,  that  it  is  within  the  common 
scope  and  meaning  of  the  words  "  personal  identity," 
not  only  that  one  creature  can  become  many  as  the 
moth  becomes  manifold  in  her  eggs,  but  that  each 
individual  may  be  manifold  in  the  sense  of  being  com- 
pounded of  a  vast  number  of  subordinate  individualities 
which  have  their  separate  lives  within  him,  with  their 
hopes,  and  fears,  and  intrigues,  being  born  and  dying 
within  us,  many  generations,  of  them  during  our  single 
lifetime. 

"  An  organic  being,"  writes  Mr.  Darwin, "  is  a  micro- 
cosm, a  little  universe,  formed  of  a  host  of  self-propa- 
gating organisms,  inconceivably  minute,  and  numerous 
as  the  stars  in  heaven." 

As  these  myriads  of  smaller  organisms  are  parts 
and  processes  of  us,  so  are  we  but  parts  and  processes 
of  life  at  large. 


CHAPTEE   VIII. 

APPLICATION    OF    THE   FOREGOING   CHAPTERS — THE 
ASSIMILATION    OF   OUTSIDE   MATTER. 

LET  us  now  return  to  the  position  which  we  left  at 
the  end  of  the  fourth  chapter.  We  had  then  con- 
cluded that  the  self-development  of  each  new  life  in 
succeeding  generations — the  various  stages  through 
which  it  passes  (as  it  would  appear,  at  first  sight,  with- 
out rhyme  or  reason) — the  manner  in  which  it  prepares 
structures  of  the  most  surpassing  intricacy  and  delicacy, 
for  which  it  has  no  use  at  the  time  when  it  prepares 
them — and  the  many  elaborate  instincts  which  it  ex- 
hibits immediately  on,  and  indeed  before,  birth — all 
point  in  the  direction  of  habit  and  memory,  as  the  only 
causes  which  could  produce  them. 

Why  should  the  embryo  of  any  animal  go 
through  so  many  stages — embryological  allusions  to 
forefathers  of  a  widely  different  type  ?  And  why, 
again,  should  the  germs  of  the  same  kind  of  creature 
always  go  through  the  same  stages  ?  If  the  germ  of 
any  animal  now  living  is,  in  its  simplest  state,  but  part 
of  the  personal  identity  of  one  of  the  original  germs  of 
all  life  whatsoever,  and  hence,  if  any  now  living  organ- 


U6  LIFE  AND  HABIT. 

ism  must  be  considered  without  quibble  as  being  itself 
millions  of  years  old,  and  as  imbued  with  an  intense 
though  unconscious  memory  of  all  that  it  has  done 
sufficiently  often  to  have  made  a  permanent  impres- 
sion ;  if  this  be  so,  we  can  answer  the  above  questions 
perfectly  well.  The  creature  goes  through  so  many 
intermediate  stages  between  its  earliest  state  as  life  at 
all,  and  its  latest  development,  for  the  simplest  of  all 
reasons,  namely,  because  this  is  the  road  by  which  it 
has  always  hitherto  travelled  to  its  present  differentia- 
tion ;  this  is  the  road  it  knows,  and  into  every  turn 
and  up  or  down  of  which,  it  has  been  guided  by  the 
force  of  circumstances  and  the  balance  of  considera- 
tions. These,  acting  in  such  a  manner  for  such  and 
such  a  time,  caused  it  to  travel  in  such  and  such 
fashion,  which  fashion  having  been  once  sufficiently 
established,  becomes  a  matter  of  trick  or  routine  to 
which  the  creature  is  still  a  slave,  and  in  which  it 
confirms  itself  by  repetition  in  each  succeeding  genera- 
tion. 

Thus  I  suppose,  as  almost  every  one  else,  so  far  as 
I  can  gather,  supposes,  that  we  are  descended  from 
ancestors  of  widely  different  characters  to  our  own. 
If  we  could  see  some  of  our  forefathers  a  million  years 
back,  we  should  find  them  unlike  anything  we  could 
call  man ;  if  we  were  to  go  back  fifty  million  years,  we 
should  find  them,  it  may  be,  fishes  pure  and  simple, 
breathing  through  gills,  and  unable  to  exist  for  many 
minutes  in  air. 

It  is  admitted  on  all  hands  that  there  is  more  or 
less  analogy  between  the  einbryological  development 


ASSIMILA  TION  OF  0  UTS  IDE  MA  TTER.        \  2  7 

of  the  individual,  and  the  various  phases  or  conditions 
of  life  through  which  his  forefathers  have  passed.  I 
suppose,  then,  that  the  fish  of  fifty  million  years  back 
and  the  man  of  to-day  are  one  single  living  being,  in 
the  same  sense,  or  very  nearly  so,  as  the  octogenarian 
is  one  single  living  being  with  the  infant  from  which 
he  has  grown ;  and  that  the  fish  has  lived  himself 
into  manhood,  not  as  we  live  out  our  little  life,  living, 
and  living,  and  living  till  we  die,  but  living  by  pulsa- 
tions, so  to  speak ;  living  so  far,  and  after  a  certain 
time  going  into  a  new  body,  and  throwing  off  the  old ; 
making  his  body  much  as  we  make  anything  that  we 
want,  and  have  often  made  already,  that  is  to  say,  as 
nearly  as  may  be  in  the  same  way  as  he  made  it  last 
time ;  also  that  he  is  as  unable  as  we  ourselves  are, 
to  make  what  he  wants  without  going  through  the 
usual  processes  with  which  he  is  familiar,  even  though 
there  may  be  other  better  ways  of  doing  the  same 
thing,  which  might  not  be  far  to  seek,  if  the  creature 
thought  them  better,  and  had  not  got  so  accustomed  to 
such  and  such  a  method,  that  he  would  only  be  baffled 
and  put  out  by  any  attempt  to  teach  him  otherwise. 

And  this  oneness  of  personality  between  ourselves 
and  our  supposed  fishlike  ancestors  of  many  millions 
of  years  ago,  must  hold  also  between  each  individual 
one  of  us  and  the  single  pair  of  fishes  from  which  we 
are  each  (on  the  present  momentary  hypothesis) 
descended  ;  and  it  must  also  hold  between  such  pair  of 
fishes  and  all  their  descendants  besides  man,  it  may 
be  some  of  them  birds,  and  others  fishes  ;  all  these 
descendants,  whether  human  or  otherwise,  being  but  the 


128  LIFE  AND  HABIT. 

way  in  which  the  creature  (which  was  a  pair  of  fishes 
when  we  first  took  it  in  hand  though  it  was  a  hundred 
thousand  other  things  as  well,  and  had  been  all 
manner  of  other  things  before  any  part  of  it  became 
fishlike)  continues  to  exist — its  manner,  in  fact,  of 
growing.  As  the  manner  in  which  the  human  body 
grows  is  by  the  continued  birth  and  death,  in  our 
single  lifetime,  of  many  generations  of  cells  which  we 
know  nothing  about,  but  say  that  we  have  had  only 
one  hand  or  foot  all  our  lives,  when  we  have  really 
had  many,  one  after  another ;  so  this  huge  compound 
creature,  LIFE,  probably  thinks  itself  but  one  single 
animal  whose  component  cells,  as  it  may  imagine, 
grow,  and  it  may  be  waste  and  repair,  but  do  not 
die. 

It  may  be  that  the  cells  of  which  we  are  built  up, 
and  which  we  have  already  seen  must  be  considered 
as  separate  persons,  each  one  of  them  with  a  life  and 
memory  of  its  own — it  may  be  that  these  cells  reckon 
time  in  a  manner  inconceivable  by  us,  so  that  no  word 
can  convey  any  idea  of  it  whatever.  "What  may  to 
them  appear  a  long  and  painful  process  may  to  us  be 
so  instantaneous  as  to  escape  us  altogether,  we  wanting 
some  microscope  to  show  us  the  details  of  time.  If,  in 
like  manner,  we  were  to  allow  our  imagination  to  con- 
ceive the  existence  of  a  being  as  much  in  need  of  a 
microscope  for  our  time  and  affairs  as  we  for  those  of 
our  own  component  cells,  the  years  would  be  to  such 
a  being  but  as  the  winkings  or  the  twinklings  of  an 
eye.  "Would  he  think,  then,  that  all  the  ants  and  flies 
of  one  wink  were  different  from  those  of  the  next  ?  or 


ASSIMILATION  OF  OUTSIDE  MATTER.      129 

would  he  not  rather  believe  that  they  were  always  the 
same  flies,  and,  again,  always  the  same  men  and  women, 
if  he  could  see  them  at  all,  and  if  the  whole  human  race 
did  not  appear  to  him  as  a  sort  of  spreading  and 
lichen-like  growth  over  the  earth,  not  differentiated  at 
all  into  individuals  ?  With  the  help  of  a  microscope 
and  the  intelligent  exercise  of  his  reason,  he  would 
in  time  conceive  the  truth.  He  would  put  Covent 
Garden  Market  on  the  field  of  his  microscope,  and 
would  perhaps  write  a  great  deal  of  nonsense  about 
the  unerring  "instinct"  which  taught  each  coster- 
monger  to  recognise  his  own  basket  or  his  own 
donkey-cart ;  and  this,  mutatis  mutandis,  is  what  we 
are  getting  to  do  as  regards  our  own  bodies.  What 
I  wish  is,  to  make  the  same  sort  of  step  in  an 
upward  direction  which  has  already  been  taken  in  a 
downward  one,  and  to  show  reason  for  thinking  that 
we  are  only  component  atoms  of  a  single  compound 
creature,  LIFE,  which  has  probably  a  distinct  conception 
of  its  own  personality  though  none  whatever  of  ours, 
more  than  we  of  our  own  units.  I  wish  also  to  show 
reason  for  thinking  that  this  creature,  LIFE,  has  only 
come  to  be  what  it  is,  by  the  same  sort  of  process  as 
that  by  which  any  human  art  or  manufacture  is 
developed,  i.e.,  through  constantly  doing  the  same  thing 
over  and  over  again,  beginning  from  something  which 
is  barely  recognisable  as  faith,  or  as  the  desire  to  know, 
or  do,  or  live  at  all,  and  as  to  the  origin  of  which  we 
are  in  utter  darkness, — and  growing  till  it  is  first  con- 
scious of  effort,  then  conscious  of  power,  then  powerful 
with  but  little  consciousness,  and  finally,  so  powerful 


130  LIFE  AND  HABIT. 

and  so  charged  with  memory  as  to  be  absolutely  with- 
out all  self-consciousness  whatever,  except  as  regards 
its  latest  phases  in  each  of  its  many  differentiations,  or 
when  placed  in  such  new  circumstances  as  compel  it 
to  choose  between  death  and  a  reconsideration  of  its 
position. 

No  conjecture  can  be  hazarded  as  to  how  the 
smallest  particle  of  matter  became  so  imbued  with 
faith  that  it  must  be  considered  as  the  beginning  of 
LIFE,  or  as  to  what  such  faith  is,  except  that  it  is  the 
very  essence  of  all  things,  and  that  it  has  no  foundation. 

In  this  way,  then,  I  conceive  we  can  fairly  transfer 
the  experience  of  the  race  to  the  individual,  without 
any  other  meaning  to  our  words  than  what  they  would 
naturally  suggest ;  that  is  to  say,  that  there  is  in  every 
impregnate  ovum  a  bond  fide  memory,  which  carries  it 
back  not  only  to  the  time  when  it  was  last  an  impregnate 
ovum,  but  to  that  earlier  date  when  it  was  the  very 
beginning  of  life  at  all,  which  same  creature  it  still  is, 
whether  as  man  or  ovum,  and  hence  imbued,  so  far  as 
time  and  circumstance  allow,  with  all  its  memories. 
Surely  this  is  no  strained  hypothesis  ;  for  the  mere 
fact  that  the  germ,  from  the  earliest  moment  that  we 
are  able  to  detect  it,  appears  to  be  so  perfectly  familiar 
with  its  business,  acts  with  so  little  hesitation  and  so 
little  introspection  or  reference  to  principles,  this  alone 
should  incline  us  to  suspect  that  it  must  be  armed 
with  that  which,  so  far  as  we  observe  in  daily  life,  can 
alone  ensure  such  a  result — to  wit,  long  practice,  and 
the  memory  of  many  similar  performances. 

The  difficulty  is,  that  we  are  conscious  of  no  such 


ASSIMILA  TION  OF  0  UTSIDE  MA  TTER.      \ 3 1 

memory  in  our  own  persons,  and  beyond  the  one  great 
proof  of  memory  given  by  the  actual  repetition  of  the 
performance — and  of  some  of  the  latest  deviations 
from  the  ordinary  performance  (and  this  proof  ought 
in  itself,  one  would  have  thought,  to  outweigh  any 
save  the  directest  evidence  to  the  contrary)  we  can 
detect  no  symptom  of  any  such  mental  operation  as 
recollection  on  the  part  of  the  embryo.  On  the  other 
hand,  we  have  seen  that  we  know  most  intensely  those 
things  that  we  are  least  conscious  of  knowing;  we 
will  most  intensely  what  we  are  least  conscious  of 
willing ;  we  feel  continually  without  knowing  that  we 
feel,  and  our  attention  is  hourly  arrested  without  our 
attention  being  arrested  by  the  arresting  of  our 
attention.  Memory  is  no  less  capable  of  unconscious 
exercise,  and  on  becoming  intense  through  frequent 
repetition,  vanishes  no  less  completely  as  a  conscious 
action  of  the  mind  than  knowledge  and  volition. 
We  must  all  be  aware  of  instances  in  which  it  is  plain 
we  must  have  remembered,  without  being  in  the 
smallest  degree  conscious  of  remembering.  Is  it  then 
absurd  to  suppose  that  our  past  existences  have  been 
repeated  on  such  a  vast  number  of  occasions  that  the 
germ,  linked  on  to  all  preceding  germs,  and,  by  once 
having  become  part  of  their  identity,  imbued  with  all 
their  memories,  remembers  too  intensely  to  be  con- 
scious of  remembering,  and  works  on  with  the  same 
kind  of  unconsciousness  with  which  we  play,  01 
walk,  or  read,  until  something  unfamiliar  happens 
to  us  ?  and  is  it  not  singularly  in  accordance  with  this 
view  that  consciousness  should  begin  with  that  part 


132  LIFE  AND  HABIT. 

of  the  creature's  performance  with  which  it  is  least 
familiar,  as  having  repeated  it  least  often — that  is  to 
say,  in  our  own  case,  with  the  commencement  of  our 
human  life — at  birth,  or  thereabouts  ? 

It  is  certainly  noteworthy  that  the  embryo  is  never 
at  a  loss,  unless  something  happens  to  it  which  has  not 
usually  happened  to  its  forefathers,  and  which  in  the 
nature  of  things  it  cannot  remember. 

When  events  are  happening  to  it  which  have 
ordinarily  happened  to  its  forefathers,  and  which  it 
would  therefore  remember,  if  it  was  possessed  of  the 
kind  of  memory  which  we  are  here  attributing  to  it, 
it  acts  precisely  as  it  would  act  if  it  were  possessed  of 
such  memory. 

When,  on  the  other  hand,  events  are  happening  to  it 
which,  if  it  has  the  kind  of  memory  we  are  attributing 
to  it,  would  baffle  that  memory,  or  which  have  rarely 
or  never  been  included  in  the  category  of  its  recollec- 
tions, it  acts  precisely  as  a  creature  acts  ivJien  its  recollec- 
tion is  disturbed,  or  when  it  is  required  to  do  something 
which  it  has  never  done  before. 

We  cannot  remember  having  been  in  the  embryonic 
stage,  but  we  do  not  on  that  account  deny  that  we 
ever  were  in  such  a  stage  at  all.  On  a  little  reflection 
it  will  appear  no  more  reasonable  to  maintain  that, 
when  we  were  in  the  embryonic  stage,  we  did  not  re- 
member our  past  existences,  than  to  say  that  we  never 
were  embryos  at  all.  We  cannot  remember  what  we 
did  or  did  not  recollect  in  that  state ;  we  cannot  now 
remember  having  grown  the  eyes  which  we  un- 
doubtedly did  grow,  much  less  can  we  remember 


ASSIMILA  TION  OF  OUTSIDE  MA  TTER.      133 

whether  or  not  we  then  remembered  having  grown 
them  before ;  but  it  is  probable  that  our  memory  was 
then,  in  respect  of  our  previous  existences  as  embryos, 
as  much  more  intense  than  it  is  now  in  respect  of 
our  childhood,  as  our  power  of  acquiring  a  new  lan- 
guage was  greater  when  we  were  one  or  two  years  old, 
than  when  we  were  twenty.  And  why  should  this 
power  of  acquiring  languages  be  greater  at  two  years 
than  at  twenty,  but  that  for  many  generations  we  have 
learnt  to  speak  at  about  this  age,  and  hence  look  to 
learn  to  do  so  again  on  reaching  it,  just  as  we  looked 
to  making  eyes,  when  the  time  came  at  which  we  were 
accustomed  to  make  them. 

If  we  once  had  the  memory  of  having  been  infants 
(which  we  had  from  day  to  day  during  infancy),  and 
have  lost  it,  we  may  well  have  had  other  and  more  in- 
tense memories  which  we  have  lost  no  less  completely. 
Indeed,  there  is  nothing  more  extraordinary  in  the 
supposition  that  the  impregnate  ovum  has  an  intense 
sense  of  its  continuity  with,  and  therefore  of  its 
identity  with,  the  two  impregnate  ova  from  which  it 
has  sprung,  than  in  the  fact  that  we  have  no  sense  of 
our  continuity  with  ourselves  as  infants.  If,  then, 
there  is  no  d  priori  objection  to  this  view,  and  if  the 
impregnate  ovum  acts  in  such  a  manner  as  to  carry 
the  strongest  conviction  that  it  must  have  already  on 
many  occasions  done  what  it  is  doing  now,  and  that  it 
has  a  vivid  though  unconscious  recollection  of  what 
all,  and  more  especially  its  nearer,  ancestral  ova  did 
under  similar  circumstances,  there  would  seem  to  be 
little  doubt  what  conclusion  we  ought  to  come  to. 


134  LIFE  AND  HABIT. 

A  hen's  egg,  for  example,  as  soon  as  the  hen  begins 
to  sit,  sets  to  work  immediately  to  do  as  nearly  as 
may  be  what  the  two  eggs  from  which  its  father  and 
mother  were  hatched  did  when  hens  began  to  sit  upon 
them.  The  inference  would  seem  almost  irresistible, 
that  the  second  egg  remembers  the  course  pursued  by 
the  eggs  from  which  it  has  sprung,  and  of  whose  pre- 
sent identity  it  is  unquestionably  a  part-phase  ;  it  also 
seems  irresistibly  forced  upon  us  to  believe  that  the 
intensity  of  this  memory  is  the  secret  of  its  easy 
action. 

It  has,  I  believe,  been  often  remarked,  that  a  hen  is 
only  an  egg's  way  of  making  another  egg.  Every 
creature  must  be  allowed  to  "run"  its  own  development 
in  its  own  way  ;  the  egg's  way  may  seem  a  very  round- 
about manner  of  doing  things  ;  but  it  is  its  way,  and 
it  is  one  of  which  man,  upon  the  whole,  has  no 
great  reason  to  complain.  Why  the  fowl  should 
be  considered  more  alive  than  the  egg,  and  why 
it  should  be  said  that  the  hen  lays  the  egg,  and  not 
that  the  egg  lays  the  hen,  these  are  questions  which 
lie  beyond  the  power  of  philosophic  explanation,  but 
are  perhaps  most  answerable  by  considering  the  con- 
ceit of  man,  and  his  habit,  persisted  in  during 
many  ages,  of  ignoring  all  that  does  not  remind 
him  of  himself,  or  hurt  him,  or  profit  him ;  also  by 
considering  the  use  of  language,  which,  if  it  is  to  serve 
at  all,  can  only  do  so  by  ignoring  a  vast  number  of 
facts  which  gradually  drop  out  of  mind  from  being 
out  of  sight.  But,  perhaps,  after  all,  the  real  reason 
is,  that  the  egg  does  not  cackle  when  it  has  laid  the 


ASSIMILATION  OF  OUTSIDE  MATTER.      135 

hen,  and  that  it  works  towards  the  hen  with  gradual 
and  noiseless  steps,  which  we  can  watch  if  we  be  so 
minded ;  whereas,  we  can  less  easily  watch  the  steps 
which  lead  from  the  hen  to  the  egg,  but  hear  a  noise, 
and  see  an  egg  where  there  was  no  egg.  Therefore, 
we  say,  the  development  of  the  fowl  from  the  egg 
bears  no  sort  of  resemblance  to  that  of  the  egg  from 
the  fowl,  whereas,  in  truth,  a  hen,  or  any  other  living 
creature,  is  only  the  primordial  cell's  way  of  going  back 
upon  itself. 

But  to  return.  We  see  an  egg,  A,  which  evidently 
knows  its  own  meaning  perfectly  well,  and  we  know 
that  a  twelvemonth  ago  there  were  two  other  such 
eggs,  B  and  C,  which  have  now  disappeared,  but  from 
which  we  know  A  to  have  been  so  continuously  de- 
veloped as  to  be  part  of  the  present  form  of  their 
identity.  A's  meaning  is  seen  to  be  precisely  the  same 
as  B  and  C's  meaning ;  A's  personal  appearance  is,  to 
all  intents  and  purposes,  B  and  C's  personal  appear- 
ance ;  it  would  seem,  then,  unreasonable  to  deny 
that  A  is  only  B  and  C  come  back,  with  such  modi- 
fication as  they  may  have  incurred  since  their  disap- 
pearance ;  and  that,  in  spite  of  any  such  modification, 
they  remember  in  A  perfectly  well  what  they  did  as 
B  and  C. 

We  have  considered  the  question  of  personal 
identity  so  as  to  see  whether,  without  abuse  of  terms, 
we  can  claim  it  as  existing  between  any  two  genera- 
tions of  living  agents  (and  if  between  two,  then 
between  any  number  up  to  infinity),  and  we  found 
that  we  were  not  only  at  liberty  to  claim  this,  but 


136  LIFE  AND  HABIT. 

that  we  are  compelled  irresistibly  to  do  so,  unless,  that 
is  to  say,  we  would  think  very  differently  concerning 
personal  identity  than  we  do  at  present.  We  found 
it  impossible  to  hold  the  ordinary  common  sense 
opinions  concerning  personal  identity,  without  admit- 
ting that  we  are  personally  identical  with  all  our  fore- 
fathers, who  have  successfully  assimilated  outside 
matter  to  themselves,  and  by  assimilation  imbued  it 
with  all  their  own  memories ;  we  being  nothing  else 
than  this  outside  matter  so  assimilated  and  imbued 
with  such  memories.  This,  at  least,  will,  I  believe, 
balance  the  account  correctly. 

A  few  remarks  upon  the  assimilation  of  outside 
matter  by  living  organisms  may  perhaps  be  hazarded 
here. 

As  long  as  any  living  organism  can  maintain  itself 
in  a  position  to  which  it  has  been  accustomed,  more 
or  less  nearly,  both  in  its  own  life  and  in  those  of  its 
forefathers,  nothing  can  harm  it.  As  long  as  the 
organism  is  familiar  with  the  position,  and  remembers 
its  antecedents,  nothing  can  assimilate  it.  It  must  be 
first  dislodged  from  the  position  with  which  it  is 
familiar,  as  being  able  to  remember  it,  before  mischief 
can  happen  to  it.  Nothing  can  assimilate  living 
organism. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  moment  living  organism 
loses  sight  of  its  own  position  and  antecedents,  it  is 
liable  to  immediate  assimilation,  and  to  be  thus 
familiarised  with  the  position  and  antecedents  of  some 
other  creature.  If  any  living  organism  be  kept  for  but 
a  very  short  time  in  a  position  wholly  different  from 


A  SSIMILA  TION  OF  0  UTS  IDE  MA  TTER.      \  37 

what  it  has  been  accustomed  to  in  its  own  life,  and 
in  the  lives  of  its  forefathers,  it  commonly  loses  its 
memories  completely,  once  and  for  ever ;  but  it  must 
immediately  acquire  new  ones,  for  nothing  can  know 
nothing;  everything  must  remember  either  its  own 
antecedents,  or  some  one  else's.  And  as  nothing  can 
know  nothing,  so  nothing  can  believe  in  nothing. 

A  grain  of  corn,  for  example,  has  never  been 
accustomed  to  find  itself  in  a  hen's  stomach — neither 
it  nor  its  forefathers.  For  a  grain  so  placed  leaves 
no  offspring,  and  hence  cannot  transmit  its  experience. 
The  first  minute  or  so  after  being  eaten,  it  may  think 
it  has  just  been  sown,  and  begin  to  prepare  for  sprout- 
ing, but  in  a  few  seconds,  it  discovers  the  environment 
to  be  unfamiliar ;  it  therefore  gets  frightened,  loses  its 
head,  is  carried  into  the  gizzard,  and  comminuted 
among  the  gizzard  stones.  The  hen  succeeded  in  put- 
ting it  into  a  position  with  which  it  was  unfamiliar ; 
from  this  it  was  an  easy  stage  to  assimilating  it 
entirely.  Once  assimilated,  the  grain  ceases  to  re- 
member any  more  as  a  grain,  but  becomes  initiated  into 
all  that  happens  to,  and  has  happened  to,  fowls  for 
countless  ages.  Then  it  will  attack  all  other  grains 
whenever  it  sees  them ;  there  is  no  such  persecutor  of 
grain,  as  another  grain  when  it  has  once  fairly  identi- 
fied itself  with  a  hen. 

We  may  remark  in  passing,  that  if  anything  be  once 
familiarised  with  anything,  it  is  content.  The  only 
things  we  really  care  for  in  life  are  familiar  things ; 
let  us  have  the  means  of  doing  what  we  have  been 
accustomed  to  do,  of  dressing  as  we  have  been 


138  LIFE  AND  HABIT. 

accustomed  to  dress,  of  eating  as  we  have  been 
accustomed  to  eat,  and  let  us  have  no  less  liberty  than 
we  are  accustomed  to  have,  and  last,  but  not  least,  let 
us  not  be  disturbed  in  thinking  as  we  have  been  ac- 
customed to  think,  and  the  vast  majority  of  mankind 
will  be  very  fairly  contented — all  plants  and  animals 
will  certainly  be  so.  This  would  seem  to  suggest  a 
possible  doctrine  of  a  future  state ;  concerning  which 
we  may  reflect  that  though,  after  we  die,  we  cease  to 
be  familiar  with  ourselves,  we  shall  nevertheless  be- 
come immediately  familiar  with  many  other  histories 
compared  with  which  our  present  life  must  then  seem 
intolerably  uninteresting. 

This  is  the  reason  why  a  very  heavy  and  sudden 
shock  to  the  nervous  system  does  not  pain,  but  kills 
outright  at  once ;  while  one  with  which  the  system  can, 
at  any  rate,  try  to  familiarise  itself  is  exceedingly 
painful.  We  cannot  bear  unfamiliarity.  The  part 
that  is  treated  in  a  manner  with  which  it  is  not  familiar 
cries  immediately  to  the  brain — its  central  govern- 
ment— for  help,  and  makes  itself  generally  as  trouble- 
some as  it  can,  till  it  is  in  some  way  comforted.  Indeed, 
the  law  against  cruelty  to  animals  is  but  an  example  of 
the  hatred  we  feel  on  seeing  even  dumb  creatures  put 
into  positions  with  which  they  are  not  familiar.  We 
hate  this  so  much  for  ourselves,  that  we  will  not 
tolerate  it  for  other  creatures  if  we  can  possibly  avoid 
it.  So  again,  it  is  said,  that  when  Andromeda  and 
Perseus  had  travelled  but  a  little  way  from  the  rock 
where  Andromeda  had  so  long  been  chained,  she  began 
upbraiding  him  with  the  loss  of  her  dragon,  who,  on 


A  SSIMILA  TION  OF  0  UTS  IDE  MA  TTER.      1 39 

the  whole,  she  said,  had  been  very  good  to  her.  The 
only  things  we  really  hate  are  unfamiliar  things,  and 
though  nature  would  not  be  nature  if  she  did  not  cross 
our  love  of  the  familiar  with  a  love  also  of  the  un- 
familiar, yet  there  can  be  no  doubt  which  of  the  two 
principles  is  master. 

Let  us  return,  however,  to  the  grain  of  corn.  If 
the  grain  had  had  presence  of  mind  to  avoid  being 
carried  into  the  gizzard  stones,  as  many  seeds  do  which 
are  carried  for  hundreds  of  miles  in  birds'  stomachs, 
and  if  it  had  persuaded  itself  that  the  novelty  of  the 
position  was  not  greater  than  it  could  very  well  manage 
to  put  up  with — if,  in  fact,  it  had  not  known  when  it 
was  beaten — it  might  have  stuck  in  the  hen's  stomach 
and  begun  to  grow ;  in  this  case  it  would  have  assimi- 
lated a  good  part  of  the  hen  before  many  days  were 
over ;  for  hens  are  not  familiar  with  grains  that  grow 
in  their  stomachs,  and  unless  the  one  in  question 
was  as  strongminded  for  a  hen,  as  the  grain  that 
could  avoid  being  assimilated  would  be  for  a  grain, 
the  hen  would  soon  cease  to  take  an  interest  in 
her  antecedents.  It  is  to  be  doubted,  however,  whether 
a  grain  has  ever  been  grown  which  has  had  strength 
of  mind  enough  to  avoid  being  set  off  its  balance  on 
finding  itself  inside  a  hen's  gizzard.  For  living 
organism  is  the  creature  of  habit  and  routine,  and  the 
inside  of  a  gizzard  is  not  in  the  grain's  programme. 

Suppose,  then,  that  the  grain,  instead  of  being  carried 
into  the  gizzard,  had  stuck  in  the  hen's  throat  and 
choked  her.  It  would  now  find  itself  in  a  position 
very  like  what  it  had  often  been  in  before.  That  is 


HO  LIFE  AND  HABIT. 

to  say,  it  would  be  in  a  damp,  dark,  quiet  place,  not 
too  far  from  light,  and  with  decaying  matter  around 
it.  It  would  therefore  know  perfectly  well  what  to 
do,  and  would  begin  to  grow  until  disturbed,  and  again 
put  into  a  position  with  which  it  might,  very  possibly, 
be  unfamiliar. 

The  great  question  between  vast  masses  of  living 
organism  is  simply  this :  "  Am  I  to  put  you  into  a 
position  •rcith  which  your  forefathers  have  been  un- 
familiar, or  are  you  to  put  me  into  one  about  which 
my  own  have  been  in  like  manner  ignorant  ?  "  Man 
is  only  the  dominant  animal  on  the  earth,  because 
he  can,  as  a  general  rule,  settle  this  question  in  his 
own  favour. 

The  only  manner  in  which  an  organism,  which  has 
once  forgotten  its  antecedents,  can  ever  recover  its 
memory,  is  by  being  assimilated  by  a  creature  of  its 
own  kind ;  one,  moreover,  which  knows  its  business,  or 
is  not  in  such  a  false  position  as  to  be  compelled  to  be 
aware  of  being  so.  It  was,  doubtless,  owing  to  the 
recognition  of  this  fact,  that  some  Eastern  nations,  as 
we  are  told  by  Herodotus,  were  in  the  habit  of  eating 
their  deceased  parents — for  matter  which  has  once  been 
assimilated  by  any  identity  or  personality,  becomes 
for  all  practical  purposes  part  of  the  assimilating 
personality. 

The  bearing  of  the  above  will  become  obvious  when 
we  return,  as  we  will  now  do,  to  the  question  of  per- 
sonal identity.  The  only  difficulty  would  seem  to  lie 
in  our  unfamiliarity  with  the  real  meanings  which  we 
attach  to  words  in  daily  use.  Hence,  while  recognis- 


ASSIMILA  TION  OF  0  UTSIDE  MA  TTER.      141 

ing  continuity  without  sudden  break  as  the  underlying 
principle  of  identity,  we  forget  that  this  involves  per- 
sonal identity  between  all  the  beings  who  are  in 
one  chain  of  descent,  the  numbers  of  such  beings, 
whether  in  succession,  or  contemporaneous,  going  for 
nothing  at  all.  Thus  we  take  two  eggs,  one  male  and 
one  female,  and  hatch  them ;  after  some  months  the 
pair  of  fowls  so  hatched,  having  succeeded  in  putting 
a  vast  quantity  of  grain  and  worms  into  false  positions, 
become  full-grown,  breed,  and  produce  a  dozen  new  eggs. 

Two  live  fowls  and  a  dozen  eggs  are  the  present 
phase  of  the  personality  of  the  two  original  eggs.  They 
are  also  part  of  the  present  phase  of  the  personality  of  all 
the  worms  and  grain  which  the  fowls  have  assimilated 
from  their  leaving  the  eggshell ;  but  the  personalities 
of  these  last  do  not  count ;  they  have  lost  their  grain 
and  worm  memories,  and  are  instinct  with  the  memo- 
ries of  the  whole  ancestry  of  the  creature  which  has 
assimilated  them. 

We  cannot,  perhaps,  strictly  say  that  the  two  fowls 
and  the  dozen  new  eggs  actually  are  the  two  original 
eggs  ;  these  two  eggs  are  no  longer  in  existence,  and  we 
see  the  two  birds  themselves  which  were  hatched  from 
them.  A  bird  cannot  be  called  an  egg  without  an 
abuse  of  terms.  Xevertheless,  it  is  doubtful  how  far 
we  should  not  say  this,  for  it  is  only  with  a  mental 
reserve — and  with  no  greater  mental  reserve — 
that  we  predicate  absolute  identity  concerning  any 
living  being  for  two  consecutive  moments ;  and  it 
is  certainly  as  free  from  quibble  to  say  to  two  fowls 
and  a  dozen  eggs,  "  you  are  the  two  eggs  I  had  on  niy 


142  LIFE  AND  HABIT. 

kitchen  shelf  twelve  months  ago,"  as  to  say  to  a  man, 
"  you  are  the  child  whom  I  remember  thirty  years  ago 
in  your  mother's  arms."  In  either  case  we  mean,  "  you 
have  been  continually  putting  other  organisms  into 
a  false  position,  and  then  assimilating  them,  ever  since 
I  last  saw  you,  while  nothing  has  yet  occurred  to  put 
you  into  such  a  false  position  as  to  have  made  you  lose 
the  memory  of  your  antecedents." 

It  would  seem  perfectly  fair,  therefore,  to  say  to  any 
egg  of  the  twelve,  or  to  the  two  fowls  and  the  whole 
twelve  eggs  together,  "you  were  a  couple  of  eggs 
twelve  months  ago;  twelve  months  before  that  you 
were  four  eggs ; "  and  so  on,  ad  infinitum,  the  number 
neither  of  the  ancestors  nor  of  the  descendants  counting 
for  anything,  and  continuity  being  the  sole  thing  looked 
to.  From  daily  observation  we  are  familiar  with  the 
fact  that  identity  does  both  unite  with  other  identities, 
so  that  a  single  new  identity  is  the  result,  and  does 
also  split  itself  up  into  several  identities,  so  that  the 
one  becomes  many.  This  is  plain  from  the  manner 
in  which  the  male  and  female  sexual  elements  unite  to 
form  a  single  ovum,  which  we  observe  to  be  instinct 
with  the  memories  of  both  the  individuals  from  which 
it  has  been  derived ;  and  there  is  the  additional  con- 
sideration, that  each  of  the  elements  whose  fusion  goes 
to  make  up  the  impregnate  ovum,  is  held  by  some  to 
be  itself  composed  of  a  fused  mass  of  germs,  which 
stand  very  much  in  the  same  relation  to  the  sperma- 
tozoon and  ovum,  as  the  living  cellular  units  of  which 
we  are  composed  do  to  ourselves — that  is  to  say,  are 
living  independent  organisms,  which  probably  have  no 


ASSIMILATION  OF  OUTSIDE  MATTER.      143 

conception  of  the  existence  of  the  spermatozoon  nor 
of  the  ovum,  more  than  the  spermatozoon  or  ovum 
have  of  theirs. 

This,  at  least,  is  what  I  gather  from  Mr.  Darwin's 
provisional  theory  of  Pangenesis  ;  and,  again,  from  one 
of  the  concluding  sentences  in  his  "  Effects  of  Cross 
and  Self  Fertilisation,"  where,  asking  the  question 
why  two  sexes  have  been  developed,  he  replies  that 
the  answer  seems  to  lie  "  in  the  great  good  which  is 
derived  from  the  fusion  of  two  somewhat  differentiated 
individuals.  With  the  exception,"  he  continues,  "  01 
the  lowest  organisms  this  is  possible  only  by  means  ot 
the  sexual  elements — these  consisting  of  cells  separated 
from  the  body  "  (i.e.,  separated  from  the  bodies  of  each 
parent)  "  containing  the  germs  of  every  part "  (i.e.,  con- 
sisting of  the  seeds  or  germs  from  which  each  individual 
cell  of  the  coming  organism  will  be  developed — these 
seeds  or  germs  having  been  shed  by  each  individual 
cell  of  the  parent  forms),  "  and  capable  of  being  fused 
completely  together  "  (i.e.,  so  at  least  I  gather,  capable  of 
being  fused  completely,  in  the  same  way  as  the  cells 
of  our  own  bodies  are  fused,  and  thus,  of  forming  a 
single  living  personality  in  the  case  of  both  the  male 
and  female  element;  which  elements  are  themselves 
capable  of  a  second  fusion  so  as  to  form  the  impreg- 
nate ovum).  This  single  impregnate  ovum,  then,  is 
a  single  identity  that  has  taken  the  place  of,  and 
come  up  in  the  room  of,  two  distinct  personalities, 
each  of  whose  characteristics  it,  to  a  certain  extent, 
partakes,  and  which  consist,  each  one  of  them,  of  the 
fused  germs  of  a  vast  mass  of  other  personalities. 


144  LIFE  AND  HABIT. 

As  regards  the  dispersion  of  one  identity  into  many, 
this  also  is  a  matter  of  daily  observation  in  the  case 
of  all  female  creatures  that  are  with  egg  or  young; 
the  identity  of  the  young  with  the  female  parent 
is  in  many  respects  so  complete,  as  to  need  no  enforc- 
ing, in  spite  of  the  entrance  into  the  offspring  of  all  the 
elements  derived  from  the  male  parent,  and  of  the 
gradual  separation  of  the  two  identities,  which  becomes 
more  and  more  complete,  till  in  time  it  is  hard  to 
conceive  that  they  can  ever  have  been  united. 

Numbers,  therefore,  go  for  nothing ;  and,  as  far  as 
identity  or  continued  personality  goes,  it  is  as  fair  to 
say  to  the  two  fowls,  above  referred  to,  "  you  were 
four  fowls  twelve  months  ago,"  as  it  is  to  say  to  a 
dozen  eggs,  "  you  were  two  eggs  twelve  months  ago." 
But  here  a  difficulty  meets  us  ;  for  if  we  say,  "  you 
were  two  eggs  twelve  months  ago,"  it  follows  that  we 
mean,  "  you  are  now  those  two  eggs ; "  just  as  when  we 
say  to  a  person,  "  you  were  such  and  such  a  boy 
twenty  years  ago,"  we  mean,  "  you  are  now  that  boy, 
or  all  that  represents  him  ; "  it  would  seem,  then,  that 
in  like  manner  we  should  say  to  the  two  fowls,  "  you 
are  the  four  fowls  who  between  them  laid  the  two  eggs 
from  which  you  sprung."  But  it  may  be  that  all  these 
four  fowls  are  still  to  be  seen  running  about;  we 
should  be  therefore  saying,  "you  two  fowls  are  really 
not  yourselves  only,  but  you  are  also  the  other  four 
fowls  into  the  bargain ; "  and  this  might  be  philoso- 
phically true,  and  might,  perhaps,  be  considered  so, 
but  for  the  convenience  of  the  law  courts. 

The   difficulty  would  seem  to  arise  from  the   fact 


ASSIMILATION  OF  OUTSIDE  MATTER.      145 

that  the  eggs  must  disappear  before  fowls  can  be 
hatched  from  them,  whereas,  the  hens  so  hatched  may 
outlive  the  development  of  other  hens,  from  the  eggs 
which  they  in  due  course  have  laid.  The  original 
eggs  being  out  of  sight  are  out  of  mind,  and  it  is 
without  an  effort  that  we  acquiesce  in  the  assertion, 
that  the  dozen  new  eggs  actually  are  the  two  original 
ones.  But  the  original  four  fowls  being  still  in  sight, 
cannot  be  ignored,  we  only,  therefore,  see  the  new 
ones  as  growths  from  the  original  ones. 

The  strict  rendering  of  the  facts  should  be,  "  you 
are  part  of  the  present  phase  of  the  identity  of  such 
and  such  a  past  identity,"  i.e.,  either  of  the  two  eggs  or 
the  four  fowls,  as  the  case  may  be ;  this  will  put  the 
eggs  and  the  fowls,  as  it  were,  into  the  same  box,  and 
will  meet  both  the  philosophical  and  legal  require- 
ments of  the  case,  only  it  is  a  little  long. 

So  far  then,  as  regards  actual  identity  of  person- 
ality ;  which,  we  find,  will  allow  us  to  say,  that  eggs 
are  part  of  the  present  phase  of  a  certain  past  identity, 
whether  of  other  eggs,  or  of  fowls,  or  chickens,  and  in 
like  manner  that  chickens  are  part  of  the  present 
phase  of  certain  other  chickens,  or  eggs,  or  fowls ;  in 
fact,  that  anything  is  part  of  the  present  phase  of  any 
past  identity  in  the  line  of  its  ancestry.  But  as 
regards  the  actual  memory  of  such  identity  (unconsci- 
ous memory,  but  still  clearly  memory),  we  observe  that 
the  egg,  as  long  as  it  is  an  egg,  appears  to  have  a  very 
distinct  recollection  of  having  been  an  egg  before,  and 
the  fowl  of  having  been  a  fowl  before,  but  that  neither 
egg  nor  fowl  appear  to  have  any  recollection  of  any 


146  LIFE  AND  HABIT. 

other  stage  of  their  past  existences,  than  the  one 
corresponding  to  that  in  which  they  are  themselves  at 
the  moment  existing. 

So  we,  at  six  or  seven  years  old,  have  no  recollection  of 
ever  having  been  infants,  much  less  of  having  been 
embryos ;  but  the  manner  in  which  we  shed  our  teeth 
and  make  new  ones,  and  the  way  in  which  we  grow 
generally,  making  ourselves  for  the  most  part  exceed- 
ingly like  what  we  made  ourselves,  in  the  person  of 
some  one  of  our  nearer  ancestors,  and  not  unfrequently 
repeating  the  very  blunders  which  we  made  upon  that 
occasion  when  we  come  to  a  corresponding  age,  proves 
most  incontestably  that  we  remember  our  past  exist- 
ences, though  too  utterly  to  be  capable  of  introspection 
in  the  matter.  So,  when  we  grow  wisdom  teeth,  at 
the  age  it  may  be  of  one  or  two  and  twenty,  it  is  plain 
we  remember  our  past  existences  at  that  age,  however 
completely  we  may  have  forgotten  the  earlier  stages  of 
our  present  existence.  It  may  be  said  that  it  is  the 
jaw  which  remembers,  and  not  we,  but  it  seenis  hard  to 
deny  the  jaw  a  right  of  citizenship  in  our  personality ; 
and  in  the  case  of  a  growing  boy,  every  part  of  him 
seems  to  remember  equally  well,  and  if  every  part  of 
him  combined  does  not  make  him,  there  would  seem 
but  little  use  in  continuing  the  argument  further. 

In  like  manner,  a  caterpillar  appears  not  to  remem- 
ber having  been  an  egg,  either  in  its  present  or  any 
past  existence.  It  has  no  concern  with  eggs  as  soon 
as  it  is  hatched,  but  it  clearly  remembers  not  only 
having  been  a  caterpillar  before,  but  also  having  turned 
itself  into  a  chrysalis  before ;  for  when  the  time  conies 


ASSIMILA  TION  OF  OUTSIDE  MA  TTER.      147 

for  it  to  do  this,  it  is  at  no  loss,  as  it  would  certainly  be 
if  the  position  was  unfamiliar,  but  it  immediately 
begins  doing  what  it  did  when  last  it  was  in  a  like 
case,  repeating  the  process  as  nearly  as  the  environ- 
ment will  allow,  taking  every  step  in  the  same  order 
as  last  time,  and  doing  its  work  with  that  ease  and 
perfection  which  we  observe  to  belong  to  the  force  of 
habit,  and  to  be  utterly  incompatible  with  any  other 
supposition  than  that  of  long  long  practice. 

Once  having  become  a  chrysalis,  its  memory  of  its 
caterpillarhood  appears  to  leave  it  for  good  and  all, 
not  to  return  until  it  again  assumes  the  shape  of  a 
caterpillar  by  process  of  descent.  Its  memory  now 
overleaps  all  past  modifications,  and  reverts  to  the 
time  when  it  was  last  what  it  is  now,  and  though  it 
is  probable  that  both  caterpillar  and  chrysalis,  on  any 
given  day  of  their  existence  in  either  of  these  forms, 
have  some  sort  of  dim  power  of  recollecting  what 
happened  to  them  yesterday,  or  the  day  before;  yet  it 
is  plain  their  main  memory  goes  back  to  the  corres- 
ponding day  of  their  last  existence  in  their  present 
form,  the  chrysalis  remembering  what  happened  to  it 
on  such  a  day  far  more  practically,  though  less  con- 
sciously, than  what  happened  to  it  yesterday;  and 
naturally,  for  yesterday  is  but  once,  and  its  past  exist- 
ences have  been  legion.  Hence,  it  prepares  its  wings 
in  due  time,  doing  each  day  what  it  did  on  the  corres- 
ponding day  of  its  last  chrysalishood,  and  at  length 
becoming  a  moth ;  whereon  its  circumstances  are  so 
changed  that  it  loses  all  sense  of  its  identity  as  a 
chrysalis  (as  completely  as  we,  for  precisely  the  same 


148  LIFE  AND  HABIT. 

reason,  lose  all  sense  of  our  identity  with  ourselves  as 
infants),  and  remembers  nothing  but  its  past  exist- 
ences as  a  moth. 

We  observe  this  to  hold  throughout  the  animal  and 
vegetable  kingdoms.  In  any  one  phase  of  the  existence 
of  the  lower  animals,  we  observe  that  they  remember 
the  corresponding  stage,  and  a  little  on  either  side  of 
it,  of  all  their  past  existences  for  a  very  great  length 
of  time.  In  their  present  existence  they  remember  a 
little  behind  the  present  moment  (remembering  more 
and  more  the  higher  they  advance  in  the  scale  of  life), 
and  being  able  to  foresee  about  as  much  as  they  could 
foresee  in  their  past  existences,  sometimes  more  and 
sometimes  less.  As  with  memory,  so  with  prescience. 
The  higher  they  advance  in  the  scale  of  life  the  more 
prescient  they  are.  It  must,  of  course,  be  remembered, 
and  will  later  on  be  more  fully  dwelt  upon,  that  no 
offspring  can  remember  anything  which  happens  to  its 
parents  after  it  and  its  parents  have  parted  company ; 
and  this  is  why  there  is,  perhaps,  more  irregularity  as 
regards  our  wisdom-teeth  than  about  anything  else 
that  we  grow ;  inasmuch  as  it  must  not  uncommonly 
have  happened  in  a  long  series  of  generations,  that  the 
offspring  has  been  born  before  the  parents  have  grown 
their  wisdom-teeth,  and  thus  there  will  be  faults  in  the 
memory. 

Is  there,  then,  anything  in  memory,  as  we  observe 
it  in  ourselves  and  others,  under  circumstances  in 
which  we  shall  agree  in  calling  it  memory  pure  and 
simple  without  ambiguity  of  terms — is  there  any- 
thing in  memory  which  bars  us  from  supposing  it 


ASSIMILATION  OF  OUTSIDE  MATTER.      149 

capable  of  overleaping  a  long  time  of  abeyance,  and 
thus  of  enabling  each  impregnate  ovum,  or  each  grain, 
to  remember  what  it  did  when  last  in  a  like  condition, 
and  to  go  on  remembering  the  corresponding  period  of 
its  prior  developments  throughout  the  whole  period  of 
its  present  growth,  though  such  memory  has  entirely 
failed  as  regards  the  interim  between  any  two  corres- 
ponding periods,  and  is  not  consciously  recognised 
by  the  individual  as  being  exercised  at  all  ? 


CHAPTER  IX, 

ON  THE  ABEYANCE  OF  MEMORY. 

LET  us  assume,  for  the  moment,  that  the  action  of  each 
impregnate  germ  is  due  to  memory,  which,  as  it  were, 
pulsates  anew  in  each  succeeding  generation,  so  that 
immediately  on  impregnation,  the  germ's  memory 
reverts  to  the  last  occasion  on  which  it  was  in  a  like 
condition,  and  recognising  the  position,  is  at  no  loss 
what  to  do.  It  is  plain  that  in  all  cases  where  there 
are  two  parents,  that  is  to  say,  in  the  greater  number 
of  cases,  whether  in  the  vegetable  or  animal  kingdoms, 
there  must  be  two  such  last  occasions,  each  of  which 
will  have  an  equal  claim  upon  the  attention  of  the 
new  germ.  Its  memory  would  therefore  revert  to 
both,  and  though  it  would  probably  adhere  more  closely 
to  the  course  which  it  took  either  as  its  father  or  its 
mother,  and  thus  come  out  eventually  male  or  female, 
yet  it  would  be  not  a  little  influenced  by  the  less 
potent  memory. 

And  not  only  this,  but  each  of  the  germs  to  which 
the  memory  of  the  new  germ  reverts,  is  itself  imbued 
with  the  memories  of  its  own  parent  germs,  and  these 
again  with  the  memories  of  preceding  generations,  and 


ON  THE  ABEYANCE  OF  MEMORY.          151 

so  on  ad  infinitum;  so  that,  ex  hypothesi,  the  germ  must 
become  instinct  with  all  these  memories,  epitomised  as 
after  long  time,  and  unperceived  though  they  may  well 
be,  not  to  say  obliterated  in  part  or  entirely  so  far  as 
many  features  are  concerned,  by  more  recent  impres- 
sions. In  this  case,  we  must  conceive  of  the  impreg- 
nate germ  as  of  a  creature  which  has  to  repeat  a  per- 
formance already  repeated  before  on  countless  different 
occasions,  but  with  no  more  variation  on  the  more 
recent  ones  than  is  inevitable  in  the  repetition  of  any 
performance  by  an  intelligent  being. 

Now  if  we  take  the  most  parallel  case  to  this  which 
we  can  find,  and  consider  what  we  should  ourselves  do 
under  such  circumstances,  that  is  to  say,  if  we  consider 
what  course  is  actually  taken  by  beings  who  are  in- 
fluenced by  what  we  all  call  memory,  when  they  repeat 
an  already  often-repeated  performance,  and  if  we  find 
a  very  strong  analogy  between  the  course  so  taken  by 
ourselves,  and  that  which  from  whatever  cause  we 
observe  to  be  taken  by  a  living  germ,  we  shall  surely 
be  much  inclined  to  think  that  there  must  be  a  simi- 
larity in  the  causes  of  action  in  each  case ;  and  hence, 
to  conclude,  that  the  action  of  the  germ  is  due  to 
memory. 

It  will,  therefore,  be  necessary  to  consider  the  general 
tendency  of  our  minds  in  regard  to  impressions  made 
upon  us,  and  the  memory  of  such  impressions. 

Deep    impressions  upon  the  memory  are  made  in 
two  ways,  differing  rather  in  degree  than  kind,  but 
with   two  somewhat  widely  different  results.     They 
are  made : — 
L 


152  LIFE  AND  HABIT. 

I.  By  unfamiliar  objects,  or  combinations,  which 
come  at  comparatively  long  intervals,  and  produce  their 
effect,  as  it  were,  by  one  hard  blow.  The  effect  of  these 
will  vary  with  the  unfamiliarity  of  the  impressions 
themselves,  and  the  manner  in  which  they  seem  likely 
to  lead  to  a  further  development  of  the  unfamiliar, 
i.e.,  with  the  question,  whether  they  seem  likely  to 
compel  us  to  change  our  habits,  either  for  better  or 
worse. 

Thus,  if  an  object  or  incident  be  very  unfamiliar,  as, 
we  will  say,  a  whale  or  an  iceberg  to  one  travelling  to 
America  for  the  first  time,  it  will  make  a  deep  impres- 
sion, though  but  little  affecting  our  interests ;  but  if 
we  struck  against  the  iceberg  and  were  shipwrecked,  or 
nearly  so,  it  would  produce  a  much  deeper  impression, 
we  should  think  much  more  about  icebergs,  and  re- 
member much  more  about  them,  than  if  we  had  merely 
seen  one.  So,  also,  if  we  were  able  to  catch  the  whale 
and  sell  its  oil,  we  should  have  a  deep  impression  made 
upon  us.  In  either  case  we  see  that  the  amount  of 
unfamiliarity,  either  present  or  prospective,  is  the  main 
determinant  of  the  depth  of  the  impression. 

As  with  consciousness  and  volition,  so  with  sudden 
unfamiliarity.  It  impresses  us  more  and  more  deeply 
the  more  unfamiliar  it  is,  until  it  reaches  such  a  point 
of  impressiveness  as  to  make  no  further  impression  at 
all ;  on  which  we  then  and  there  die.  For  death  only 
kills  through  unfamiliarity — that  is  to  say,  because  the 
new  position,  whatever  it  is,  is  so  wide  a  cross  as 
compared  with  the  old  one,  that  we  cannot  fuse  the 
two  so  as  to  understand  the  combination  ;  hence  we 


ON  THE  ABEYANCE  OF  MEMORY.          153 

lose  all  recognition  of,  and  faith  in,  ourselves  and  our 
surroundings. 

But  however  much  we  imagine  we  remember  con- 
cerning the  details  of  any  remarkable  impression  which 
has  been  made  us  by  a  single  blow,  we  do  not  remem- 
ber as  much  or  nearly  as  much  as  we  think  we  do. 
The  subordinate  details  soon  drop  out  of  mind.  Those 
who  think  they  remember  even  such  a  momentous 
matter  as  the  battle  of  Waterloo  recall  now  probably 
but  half-a-dozen  episodes,  a  gleam  here,  and  a  gleam 
there,  so  that  what  they  call  remembering  the  battle 
of  Waterloo,  is,  in  fact,  little  more  than  a  kind  of  dream- 
ing— so  soon  vanishes  the  memory  of  any  unrepeated 
occurrence. 

As  for  smaller  impressions,  there  is  very  little  of 
what  happens  to  us  in  each  week  that  will  be  in  our 
memories  a  week  hence ;  a  man  of  eighty  remembers 
few  of  the  unrepeated  incidents  of  his  life  beyond  those 
of  the  last  fortnight,  a  little  here,  and  a  little  there, 
forming  a  matter  of  perhaps  six  weeks  or  two  months 
in  all,  if  everything  that  he  can  call  to  mind  were 
acted  over  again  with  no  greater  fulness  than  he  can 
remember  it.  As  for  incidents  that  have  been  often 
repeated,  his  mind  strikes  a  balance  of  its  past  remini- 
scences, remembering  the  two  or  three  last  perform- 
ances, and  a  general  method  of  procedure,  but  nothing 
more. 

If,  then,  the  recollection  of  all  that  is  not  very 
novel,  or  very  often  repeated,  so  soon  fades  from  our 
own  minds,  during  what  we  consider  as  our  single 
lifetime,  what  wonder  that  the  details  of  our  daily  ex- 


154  LIFE  AND  HABIT. 

perience  should  find  no  place  in  that  brief  epitome  of 
them  which  is  all  we  can  give  in  so  small  a  volume 
as  offspring  ? 

If  we  cannot  ourselves  remember  the  hundred- 
thousandth  part  of  what  happened  to  us  during  our  own 
childhood,  how  can  we  expect  our  offspring  to  remember 
more  than  what,  through  frequent  repetition,  they  can 
now  remember  as  a  residuum,  or  general  impression. 
On  the  other  hand,  whatever  we  remember  in  consequence 
of  but  a  single  impression,  we  remember  consciously. 
We  can  at  will  recall  details,  and  are  perfectly  well 
aware,  when  we  do  so,  that  we  are  recollecting.  A  man 
who  has  never  seen  death  looks  for  the  first  time  upon 
the  dead  face  of  some  near  relative  or  friend.  He  gazes 
for  a  few  short  minutes,  but  the  impression  thus  made 
does  not  soon  pass  out  of  his  mind.  He  remembers 
the  room,  the  hour  of  the  day  or  night,  and  if  by  day, 
what  sort  of  a  day.  He  remembers  in  what  part  of 
the  room,  and  how  disposed  the  body  of  the  deceased 
was  lying.  Twenty  years  afterwards  he  can,  at  will, 
recall  all  these  matters  to  his  mind,  and  picture  to 
himself  the  scene  as  he  originally  witnessed  it. 

The  reason  is  plain ;  the  impression  was  very  un- 
familiar, and  affected  the  beholder,  both  as  regards  the 
loss  of  one  who  was  dear  to  him,  and  as  reminding 
him  with  more  than  common  force  that  he  will  one 
day  die  himself.  Moreover  the  impression  was  a  simple 
one,  not  involving  much  subordinate  detail ;  we  have 
in  this  case,  therefore,  an  example  of  the  most  lasting 
kind  of  impression  that  can  be  made  by  a  single  un- 
repeated  event.  But  if  we  examine  ourselves  closely, 


ON  THE  ABEYANCE  OF  MEMORY.  155 

we  shall  find  that  after  a  lapse  of  years  we  do  not 
remember  as  much  as  we  think  we  do,  even  in  such 
a  case  as  this ;  and  that  beyond  the  incidents  above 
mentioned,  and  the  expression  upon  the  face  of  the 
dead  person,  we  remember  little  of  what  we  can  so 
consciously  and  vividly  recall. 

II.  Deep  impressions  are  also  made  by  the  repetition, 
more  or  less  often,  of  a  feeble  impression  which,  if  un- 
repeated,  would  have  soon  passed  out  of  our  minds. 
We  observe,  therefore,  that  we  remember  best  what  we 
have  done  least  often — any  unfamiliar  deviation,  that  is 
to  say,  from  our  ordinary  method  of  procedure — and 
what  we  have  done  most  often,  with  which,  therefore, 
we  are  most  familiar;  our  memory  being  mainly 
affected  by  the  force  of  novelty  and  the  force  of  routine 
— the  most  unfamiliar,  and  the  most  familiar,  incidents 
or  objects. 

But  we  remember  impressions  which  have  been 
made  upon  us  by  force  of  routine,  in  a  very  different 
way  to  that  in  which  we  remember  a  single  deep  im- 
pression. As  regards  this  second  class,  which  com- 
prises far  the  most  numerous  and  important  of  the 
impressions  with  which  our  memory  is  stored,  it  is  often 
only  by  the  fact  of  our  performance  itself  that  we  are 
able  to  recognise  or  show  to  others  that  we  remember 
at  all.  We  often  do  not  remember  how,  or  when,  or 
where  we  acquired  our  knowledge.  All  we  remember 
is,  that  we  did  learn,  and  that  at  one  time  and  another 
we  have  done  this  or  that  very  often. 

As  regards  this  second  class  of  impressions  we  may 
observe : — 


156  LIFE  AND  HABIT. 

I.  That  as  a  general  rule  we  remember  only  the 
individual  features  of  the  last  few  repetitions  of 
the  act — if,  indeed,  we  remember  this  much.  The 
influence  of  preceding  ones  is  to  be  found  only  in  the 
general  average  of  the  procedure,  which  is  modified 
by  them,  but  unconsciously  to  ourselves.  Take,  for 
example,  some  celebrated  singer,  or  pianoforte  player, 
who  has  sung  the  same  air,  or  performed  the  same 
sonata  several  hundreds  or,  it  may  be,  thousands  of 
times :  of  the  details  of  individual  performances,  lie 
can  probably  call  to  mind  none  but  those  of  the  last 
few  days,  yet  there  can  be  no  question  that  his 
present  performance  is  affected  by,  and  modified  by, 
all  his  previous  ones;  the  care  he  has  bestowed  on 
these  being  the  secret  of  his  present  proficiency. 

In  each  performance  (the  performer  being  supposed 
in  the  same  state  of  mental  and  bodily  health),  the 
tendency  will  be  to  repeat  the  immediately  preceding 
performances  more  nearly  than  remoter  ones.  It  is 
the  common  tendency  of  living  beings  to  go  on  doing 
what  they  have  been  doing  most  recently.  The  last 
habit  is  the  strongest.  Hence,  if  he  took  great  pains 
last  time,  he  will  play  better  now,  and  will  take  a  like 
degree  of  pains,  and  play  better  still  next  time,  and  so 
go  on  improving  while  life  and  vigour  last.  If,  on  the 
other  hand,  he  took  less  pains  last  time,  he  will  play 
worse  now,  and  be  inclined  to  take  little  pains  next 
time,  and  so  gradually  deteriorate.  This,  at  least,  is 
the  common  everyday  experience  of  mankind. 

So  with  painters,  actors,  and  professional  men  of 
every  description ;  after  a  little  while  the  memory  of 


ON  THE  ABEYANCE  OF  MEMORY.          157 

many  past  performances  strikes  a  sort  of  fused  balance 
in  the  mind,  which  results  in  a  general  method  of 
procedure  with  but  little  conscious  memory  of  even 
the  latest  performances,  and  with  none  whatever  of 
by  far  the  greater  number  of  the  remoter  ones. 

Still,  it  is  noteworthy,  that  the  memory  of  some 
even  of  these  will  occasionally  assert  itself,  so  far  as 
we  can  see,  arbitrarily,  the  reason  why  this  or  that 
occasion  should  still  haunt  us,  when  others  like  them 
are  forgotten,  depending  on  some  cause  too  subtle  for 
our  powers  of  observation. 

Even  with  such  a  simple  matter  as  our  daily  dress- 
ing and  undressing,  we  may  remember  some  few 
details  of  our  yesterday's  toilet,  but  we  retain 
nothing  but  a  general  and  fused  recollection  of  the 
many  thousand  earlier  occasions  on  which  we  have 
dressed,  or  gone  to  bed.  Men  invariably  put  the 
same  leg  first  into  their  trousers — this  is  the  survival 
of  memory  in  a  residuum ;  but  they  cannot,  till  they 
actually  put  on  a  pair  of  trousers,  remember  which 
leg  they  do  put  in  first ;  this  is  the  rapid  fading  away 
of  any  small  individual  impression. 

The  seasons  may  serve  as  another  illustration ;  we 
have  a  general  recollection  of  the  kind  of  weather 
which  is  seasonable  for  any  month  in  a  year ;  what 
flowers  are  due  about  what  time,  and  whether  the 
spring  is  on  the  whole  backward  or  early;  but  we 
cannot  remember  the  weather  on  any  particular  day  a 
year  ago,  unless  some  unusual  incident  has  impressed 
it  upon  our  memory.  We  can  remember,  as  a  general 
rule,  what  kind  of  season  it  was,  upon  the  whole,  a 


158  LIFE  AND  HABIT. 

year  ago,  or  perhaps,  even  two  years ;  but  more  than 
this,  we  rarely  remember,  except  in  such  cases  as  the 
winter  of  1854-1855,  or  the  summer  of  1868;  the 
rest  is  all  merged. 

We  observe,  then,  that  as  regards  small  and  often 
repeated  impressions,  our  tendency  is  to  remember 
best,  and  in  most  detail,  what  we  have  been  doing 
most  recently,  and  what  in  general  has  occurred  most 
recently,  but  that  the  earlier  impressions  though  for- 
gotten individually,  are  nevertheless,  not  wholly 
lost. 

2.  When  we  have  done  anything  very  often,  and 
have  got  into  the  habit  of  doing  it,  we  generally  take 
the  various  steps  in  the  same  order;  in  many  cases 
this  seems  to  be  a  sine  qua  non  for  our  repetition  of 
the  action  at  all.     Thus,  there  is  probably  no  living 
man  who  could  repeat  the  words  of  "  God  save  the 
Queen"    backwards,    without    much    hesitation    and 
many  mistakes ;  so  the  musician  and  the  singer  must 
perform  their  pieces  in  the  order  of  the  notes  as  written, 
or  at  any  rate  as  they  ordinarily  perform  them ;  they 
cannot  transpose  bars  or  read  them  backwards,  without 
being  put  out,  nor  would  the  audience  recognise  the 
impressions    they   have  been    accustomed  to,  unless 
these  impressions  are  made  in  the  accustomed  order. 

3.  If,  when  we  have  once  got  well  into  the  habit 
of  doing  anything  in  a  certain  way,  some  one  shows  us 
some  other  way  of  doing  it,  or  some  way  which  would 
in  part  modify  our  procedure,  or  if  in  our  endeavours 
to  improve,  we  have  hit  upon  some  new  idea  which 
seems  likely  to  help  us,  and  thus  we  vary  our  course, 


ON  THE  ABEYANCE  OF  MEMORY.          159 

on  the  next  occasion  we  remember  this  idea  by  reason 
of  its  novelty,  but  if  we  try  to  repeat  it,  we  often  find 
the  residuum  of  our  old  memories  pulling  us  so 
strongly  into  our  old  groove,  that  we  have  the  greatest 
difficulty  in  repeating  our  performance  in  the  new 
manner;  there  is  a  clashing  of  memories,  a  conflict, 
which  if  the  idea  is  very  new,  and  involves,  so  to 
speak,  too  sudden  a  cross — too  wide  a  departure  from 
our  ordinary  course — will  sometimes  render  the  perfor- 
mance monstrous,  or  baffle  us  altogether,  the  new 
memory  failing  to  fuse  harmoniously  with  the  old.  If 
the  idea  is  not  too  widely  different  from  our  older  ones, 
we  can  cross  them  with  it,  but  with  more  or  less  diffi- 
culty, as  a  general  rule  in  proportion  to  the  amount  of 
variation.  The  whole  process  of  understanding  a  thing 
consists  in  this,  and,  so  far  as  I  can  see  at  present,  in 
this  only. 

Sometimes  we  repeat  the  new  performance  for  a  few 
times,  in  a  way  which  shows  that  the  fusion  of 
memories  is  still  in  force ;  and  then  insensibly  revert 
to  the  old,  in  which  case  the  memory  of  the  new  soon 
fades  away,  leaving  a  residuum  too  feeble  to  contend 
against  that  of  our  many  earlier  memories  of  the  same 
kind.  If,  however,  the  new  way  is  obviously  to  our 
advantage,  we  make  an  effort  to  retain  it,  and  gradu- 
ally getting  into  the  habit  of  using  it,  come  to  remem- 
ber it  by  force  of  routine,  as  we  originally  remembered 
it  by  force  of  novelty.  Even  as  regards  our  own  dis- 
coveries, we  do  not  always  succeed  in  remembering  our 
most  improved  and  most  striking  performances,  so  as  to 
be  able  to  repeat  them  at  will  immediately  :  in  any  such 


160  LIFE  AND  HABIT. 

performance  we  may  have  gone  some  way  beyond  our 
ordinary  poweis,  owing  to  some  unconscious  action  of 
the  mind.  The  supreme  effort  has  exhausted  us,  and 
we  must  rest  on  our  oars  a  little,  before  we  make 
further  progress  ;  or  we  may  even  fall  back  a  little, 
before  we  make  another  leap  in  advance. 

In  this  respect,  almost  every  conceivable  degree  of 
variation  is  observable,  according  to  differences  of 
character  and  circumstances.  Sometimes  the  new 
impression  has  to  be  made  upon  us  many  times  from 
without,  before  the  earlier  strain  of  action  is  elimi- 
nated ;  in  this  case,  there  will  long  remain  a  tendency 
to  revert  to  the  earlier  habit.  Sometimes,  after  the 
impression  has  been  once  made,  we  repeat  our  old  way 
two  or  three  times,  and  then  revert  to  the  new,  which 
gradually  ousts  the  old;  sometimes,  on  the  other 
hand,  a  single  impression,  though  involving  consider- 
able departure  from  our  routine,  makes  its  mark  so 
deeply  that  we  adopt  the  new  at  once,  though  not 
without  difficulty,  and  repeat  it  in  our  next  perform- 
ance, and  henceforward  in  all  others ;  but  those  who 
vary  their  performance  thus  readily  will  show  a 
tendency  to  vary  subsequent  performances  according 
as  they  receive  fresh  ideas  from  others,  or  reason  them 
out  independently.  They  are  men  of  genius. 

This  holds  good  concerning  all  actions  which  we 
do  habitually,  whether  they  involve  laborious  acquire- 
ment or  not.  Thus,  if  we  have  varied  our  usual 
dinner  in  some  way  that  leaves  a  favourable  im- 
pression upon  our  minds,  so  that  our  dinner  may,  in 
the  language  of  the  horticulturist,  be  said  to  have 


ON  THE  ABEYANCE  OF  MEMORY.         161 

"sported,"  our  tendency  will  be  to  revert  to  this 
particular  dinner  either  next  day,  or  as  soon  as 
circumstances  will  allow,  but  it  is  possible  that  several 
hundred  dinners  may  elapse  before  we  can  do  so 
successfully,  or  before  our  memory  reverts  to  this 
particular  dinner. 

4.  As  regards  our  habitual  actions,  however  un- 
consciously we  remember  them,  we,  nevertheless, 
remember  them  with  far  greater  intensity  than  many 
individual  impressions  or  actions,  it  may  be  of  much 
greater  moment,  that  have  happened  to  us  more 
recently.  Thus,  many  a  man  who  has  familiarised 
himself,  for  example,  with  the  odes  of  Horace,  so  as 
to  have  had  them  at  his  fingers'  ends  as  the  result  of 
many  repetitions,  will  be  able  years  hence  to  repeat 
a  given  ode,  though  unable  to  remember  any  circum- 
stance in  connection  with  his  having  learnt  it,  and  no 
less  unable  to  remember  when  he  repeated  it  last.  A 
host  of  individual  circumstances,  many  of  them  not 
unimportant,  will  have  dropped  out  of  his  mind,  along 
with  a  mass  of  literature  read  but  once  or  twice,  and 
not  impressed  upon  the  memory  by  several  repetitions  ; 
but  he  returns  to  the  well-known  ode  with  so  little 
effort,  that  he  would  not  know  that  he  was  remember- 
ing unless  his  reason  told  him  so.  The  ode  seems 
more  like  something  born  with  him. 

We  observe,  also,  that  people  who  have  become 
imbecile,  or  whose  memory  is  much  impaired,  yet 
frequently  retain  their  power  of  recalling  impressions 
which  have  been  long  ago  repeatedly  made  upon 
them. 


162  LIFE  AND  HABIT. 

In  such  cases,  people  are  sometimes  seen  to  forget 
what  happened  last  week,  yesterday,  or  an  hour  ago, 
without  even  the  smallest  power  of  recovering  their 
recollection ;  but  the  oft  repeated  earlier  impression 
remains,  though  there  may  be  no  memory  whatever 
of  how  it  came  to  be  impressed  so  deeply.  The  phe- 
nomena of  memory,  therefore,  are  exactly  like  those  of 
consciousness  and  volition,  in  so  far  as  that  the  conscious- 
ness of  recollection  vanishes,  when  the  power  of  recol- 
lection has  become  intense.  When  we  are  aware  that 
we  are  recollecting,  and  are  trying,  perhaps  hard,  to  recol- 
lect, it  is  a  sign  that  we  do  not  recollect  utterly.  When 
we  remember  utterly  and  intensely,  there  is  no  conscious 
effort  of  recollection ;  our  recollection  can  only  be 
recognised  by  ourselves  and  others,  through  our  per- 
formance itself,  which  testifies  to  the  existence  of  a 
memory,  that  we  could  not  otherwise  follow  or  detect. 

5.  When  circumstances  have  led  us  to  change  our 
habits  of  life — as  when  the  university  has  succeeded 
school,  or  professional  life  the  university — we  get  into 
many  fresh  ways,  and  leave  many  old  ones.  But  on 
revisiting  the  old  scene,  unless  the  lapse  of  time  has 
been  inordinately  great,  we  experience  a  desire  to 
revert  to  old  habits.  We  say  that  old  associations 
crowd  upon  us.  Let  a  Trinity  man,  after  thirty  years 
absence  from  Cambridge,  pace  for  five  minutes  in  the 
cloister  of  Neville's  Court,  and  listen  to  the  echo  of 
his  footfall,  as  it  licks  up  against  the  end  of  the  cloister, 
or  let  an  old  Johnian  stand  wherever  he  likes  in  the 
third  Court  of  St.  John's,  in  either  case  he  will  find 
the  thirty  years  drop  out  of  his  life,  as  if  they  were 


ON  THE  ABEYANCE  OF  MEMORY.         163 

half-an-hour ;  his  life  will  have  rolled  back  upon  itself, 
to  the  date  when  he  was  an  undergraduate,  and  his 
instinct  "will  be  to  do  almost  mechanically,  whatever  it 
would  have  come  most  natural  to  him  to  do,  when  he 
was  last  there  at  the  same  season  of  the  year,  and  the 
same  hour  of  the  day ;  and  it  is  plain  this  is  due  to 
similarity  of  environment,  for  if  the  place  he  revisits 
be  much  changed,  there  will  be  little  or  no  association. 
So  those  who  are  accustomed  at  intervals  to  cross 
the  Atlantic,  get  into  certain  habits  on  board  ship, 
different  to  their  usual  ones.  It  may  be  that  at  home 
they  never  play  whist ;  on  board  ship  they  do  nothing 
else  all  the  evening.  At  home  they  never  touch 
spirits ;  on  the  voyage  they  regularly  take  a  glass  of 
something  before  they  go  to  bed.  They  do  not  smoke 
at  home ;  here  they  are  smoking  all  day.  Once  the 
voyage  is  at  an  end,  they  return  without  an  effort  to 
their  usual  habits,  and  do  not  feel  any  wish  for  cards, 
spirits,  or  tobacco.  They  do  not  remember  yesterday, 
when  they  did  want  all  these  things;  at  least,  not 
with  such  force  as  to  be  influenced  by  it  in  their 
desires  and  actions  ;  their  true  memory — the  memory 
which  makes  them  want,  and  do,  reverts  to  the  last 
occasion  on  which  they  were  in  circumstances  like 
their  present;  they  therefore  want  now  what  they 
wanted  then,  and  nothing  more  ;  but  when  the  time 
comes  for  them  to  go  on  shipboard  again,  no  sooner 
do  they  smell  the  smell  of  the  ship,  than  their  real 
memory  reverts  to  the  times  when  they  were  last  at 
sea,  and  striking  a  balance  of  their  recollections,  they 
smoke,  play  cards,  and  drink  whisky  and  water. 


1 64  LIFE  AND  HABIT. 

We  observe  it  then  as  a  matter  of  the  commonest 
daily  occurrence  within  our  own  experience,  that 
memory  does  fade  completely  away,  and  recur  with  the 
recurrence  of  surroundings  like  those  which  made  any 
particular  impression  in  the  first  instance.  We  ob- 
serve that  there  is  hardly  any  limit  to  the  completeness 
and  the  length  of  time  during  which  our  memory  may 
remain  in  abeyance.  A  smell  may  remind  an  old 
man  of  eighty  of  some  incident  of  his  childhood,  for- 
gotten for  nearly  as  many  years  as  he  has  lived.  In 
other  words,  we  observe  that  when  an  impression  has 
been  repeatedly  made  in  a  certain  sequence  on  any 
living  organism — that  impression  not  having  been  pre- 
judicial to  the  creature  itself — the  organism  will  have 
a  tendency,  on  reassuming  the  shape  and  conditions  in 
which  it  was  when  the  impression  was  last  made,  to 
remember  the  impression,  and  therefore  to  do  again 
now  what  it  did  then ;  all  intermediate  memories  drop- 
ping clean  out  of  mind,  so  far  as  they  have  any  effect 
upon  action. 

6.  Finally,  we  should  note  the  suddenness  and 
apparent  caprice  with  which  memory  will  assert  itself 
at  odd  times  ;  we  have  been  saying  or  doing  this  or 
that,  when  suddenly  a  memory  of  something  which 
happened  to  us,  perhaps  in  infancy,  comes  into  our  head; 
nor  can  we  in  the  least  connect  this  recollection  with 
the  subject  of  which  we  have  just  been  thinking,  though 
doubtless  there  has  been  a  connection,  too  rapid  and 
subtle  for  our  apprehension. 

The  foregoing  phenomena  of  memory,  so  far  as  we  can 
judge,  would  appear  to  be  present  themselves  through- 


ON  THE  ABEYANCE  OF  MEMORY.         165 

out  the  animal  and  vegetable  kingdoms.  This  will  be 
readily  admitted  as  regards  animals ;  as  regards  plants 
it  may  be  inferred  from  the  fact  that  they  generally 
go  on  doing  what  they  have  been  doing  most  lately, 
though  accustomed  to  make  certain  changes  at  certain 
points  in  their  existence.  When  the  time  comes  for 
these  changes,  they  appear  to  know  it,  and  either  bud 
forth  into  leaf,  or  shed  their  leaves,  as  the  case  may 
be.  If  we  keep  a  bulb  in  a  paper  bag  it  seems  to  re- 
member having  been  a  bulb  before,  until  the  time 
comes  for  it  to  put  forth  roots  and  grow.  Then,  if  we 
supply  it  with  earth  and  moisture,  it  seems  to  know 
where  it  is,  and  to  go  on  doing  now  whatever  it  did 
when  it  was  last  planted ;  but  if  we  keep  it  in  the 
bag  too  long,  it  knows  that  it  ought,  according  to  its 
last  experience,  to  be  treated  differently,  and  shows 
plain  symptoms  of  uneasiness ;  it  is  distracted  by  the 
bag,  which  makes  it  remember  its  bulbhood,  and  also 
by  the  want  of  earth  and  water,  without  which  associa- 
tions its  memory  of  its  previous  growth  cannot  be  duly 
kindled.  Its  roots,  therefore,  which  are  most  accus- 
tomed to  earth  and  water,  do  not  grow ;  but  its  leaves, 
which  do  not  require  contact  with  these  things  to  jog 
their  memory,  make  a  more  decided  effort  at  develop- 
ment— a  fact  which  would  seem  to  go  strongly  in 
favour  of  the  functional  independence  of  the  parts  of 
all  but  the  very  simplest  living  organisms,  if,  indeed, 
more  evidence  were  wanted  in  support  of  this. 


(  i66) 


CHAPTER  X. 

WHAT  WE  SHOULD  EXPECT  TO  FIND  IF  DIFFERENTIATIONS 
OF  STRUCTURE  AND  INSTINCT  ARE  MAINLY  DUE  TO 
MEMORY. 

To  repeat  briefly ; — we  remember  best  our  last  few  per- 
formances of  any  given  kind,  and  our  present  perform- 
ance is  most  likely  to  resemble  one  or  other  of  these ; 
we  only  remember  our  earlier  performances  by  way  of 
residuum ;  nevertheless,  at  times,  some  older  feature  is 
liable  to  reappear. 

We  take  our  steps  in  the  same  order  on  each  suc- 
cessive occasion,  and  are  for  the  most  part  incapable  of 
changing  that  order. 

The  introduction  of  slightly  new  elements  into  our 
manner  is  attended  with  benefit ;  the  new  can  be  fused 
with  the  old,  and  the  monotony  of  our  action  is  relieved. 
But  if  the  new  element  is  too  foreign,  we  cannot  fuse 
the  old  and  new — nature  seeming  equally  to  hate  too 
wide  a  deviation  from  our  ordinary  practice,  and  no 
deviation  at  all.  Or,  in  plain  English — if  any  one  gives 
us  a  new  idea  which  is  not  too  far  ahead  of  us,  such  an 
idea  is  often  of  great  service  to  us,  and  may  give  new 
life  to  our  work — in  fact,  we  soon  go  back,  unless  we 
more  or  leas  frequently  come  into  contact  with  new 


WHAT  WE  MIGHT  EXPECT.  167 

ideas,  and  are  capable  of  understanding  and  making 
use  of  them ;  if,  on  the  other  hand,  they  are  too  new, 
and  too  little  led  up  to,  so  that  we  find  them  too 
strange  and  hard  to  be  a"ble  to  understand  them  and 
adopt  them,  then  they  put  us  out,  with  every  degree  of 
completeness — from  simply  causing  us  to  fail  in  this  or 
that  particular  part,  to  rendering  us  incapable  of  even 
trying  to  do  our  work  at  all,  from  pure  despair  of  suc- 
ceeding. 

It  requires  many  repetitions  to  fix  an  impression 
firmly ;  but  when  it  is  fixed,  we  cease  to  have  much 
recollection  of  the  manner  in  which  it  came  to  be  so, 
or  of  any  single  and  particular  recurrence. 

Our  memory  is  mainly  called  into  action  by  force  of 
association  and  similarity  in  the  surroundings.  We  want 
to  go  on  doing  what  we  did  when  we  were  last  as  we  are 
now,  and  we  forget  what  we  did  in  the  meantime. 

These  rules,  however,  are  liable  to  many  exceptions ; 
as  for  example,  that  a  single  and  apparently  not  very 
extraordinary  occurrence  may  sometimes  produce  a 
lasting  impression,  and  be  liable  to  return  with  sudden 
force  at  some  distant  time,  and  then  to  go  on  returning 
to  us  at  intervals.  Some  incidents,  in  fact,  we  know 
not  how  nor  why,  dwell  with  us  much  longer  than 
others  which  were  apparently  quite  as  noteworthy  or 
perhaps  more  so. 

Now  I  submit  that  if  the  above  observations  are  just, 
and  if,  also,  the  offspring,  after  having  become  a  new 
and  separate  personality,  yet  retains  so  much  of  the  old 
identity  of  which  it  was  once  indisputably  part,  that  it 
remembers  what  it  did  when  it  was  part  of  that  identity 


1 68  LIFE  AND  HABIT. 

as  soon  as  it  finds  itself  in  circumstances  which  are  cal- 
culated to  refresh  its  memory  owing  to  their  similarity  to 
certain  antecedent  ones,  then  we  should  expect  to  find: — 

I.  That  offspring  should,  as  a  general  rule,  resemble 
its  own  most  immediate  progenitors ;  that  is  to  say,  that 
it  should  remember  best  what  it  has  been  doing  most 
recently.  The  memory  being  a  fusion  of  its  recollec- 
tions of  what  it  did,  both  when  it  was  its  father  and 
also  when  it  was  its  mother,  the  offspring  should  have 
a  very  common  tendency  to  resemble  both  parents,  the 
one  in  some  respects,  and  the  other  in  others ;  but  it 
might  also  hardly  less  commonly  show  a  more  marked 
recollection  of  the  one  history  than  of  the  other,  thus 
more  distinctly  resembling  one  parent  than  the  other. 
And  this  is  what  we  observe  to  be  the  case.  Not  only 
so  far  as  that  the  offspring  is  almost  invariably  either 
male  or  female,  and  generally  resembles  rather  the  one 
parent  than  the  other,  but  also  that  in  spite  of  such  pre- 
ponderance of  one  set  of  recollections,  the  sexual  char- 
acters and  instincts  of  the  opposite  sex  appear,  whether 
in  male  or  female,  though  undeveloped  and  incapable 
of  development  except  by  abnormal  treatment,  such  as 
has  occasionally  caused  milk  to  be  developed  in  the 
mammary  glands  of  males ;  or  by  mutilation,  or  failure 
of  sexual  instinct  through  age,  upon  which,  male  charac- 
teristics frequently  appear  in  the  females  of  any  species. 

Brothers  and  sisters,  each  giving  their  own  version 
of  the  same  story,  though  in  different  words,  should 
resemble  each  other  more  closely  than  more  distant 
relations.  This  too  we  see. 

But  it  should  frequently  happen  that  offspring  should 


WHAT  WE  MIGHT  EXPECT.  169 

resemble  its  penultimate  rather  than  its  latest  phase, 
and  should  thus  be  more  like  a  grand-parent  than  a 
parent ;  for  we  observe  that  we  very  often  repeat  a  per- 
formance in  a  manner  resembling  that  of  some  earlier, 
but  still  recent,  repetition ;  rather  than  on  the  precise 
lines  of  our  very  last  performance.  First-cousins  may 
in  this  case  resemble  each  other  more  closely  than 
brothers  and  sisters. 

More  especially,  we  should  not  expect  very  success- 
ful men  to  be  fathers  of  particularly  gifted  children ; 
for  the  best  men  are,  as  it  were,  the  happy  thoughts 
and  successes  of  the  race — nature's  "flukes,"  so  to 
speak,  in  her  onward  progress.  No  creature  can  repeat 
at  will,  and  immediately,  its  highest  flight.  It  needs 
repose.  The  generations  are  the  essays  of  any  given 
race  towards  the  highest  ideal  which  it  is  as  yet  able  to 
see  ahead  of  itself,  and  this,  in  the  nature  of  things, 
cannot  be  very  far;  so  that  we  should  expect  to  see 
success  followed  by  more  or  less  failure,  and  failure 
by  success — a  very  successful  creature  being  a  great 
"  fluke."  And  this  is  what  we  find. 

In  its  earlier  stages  the  embryo  should  be  simply 
conscious  of  a  general  method  of  procedure  on  the  part 
of  its  forefathers,  and  should,  by  reason  of  long  prac- 
tice, compress  tedious  and  complicated  histories  into  a 
very  narrow  compass,  remembering  no  single  perform- 
ance in  particular.  For  we  observe  this  in  nature,  both 
as  regards  the  sleight-of-hand  which  practice  gives  to 
those  who  are  thoroughly  familiar  with  their  business, 
and  also  as  regards  the  fusion  of  remoter  memories  into 
a  general  residuum. 


i;o  LIFE  AND  HABIT. 

II.  We  should  expect  to  find  that  the  offspring, 
whether  in  its  embryonic  condition,  or  in  any  stage  of 
development  till  it  has  reached  maturity,  should  adopt 
nearly  the  same  order  in  going  through  all  its  various 
stages.  There  should  be  such  slight  variations  as  are 
inseparable  from  the  repetition  of  any  performance  by 
a  living  being  (as  contrasted  with  a  machine),  but  no 
more.  And  this  is  what  actually  happens.  A  man  may 
cut  his  wisdom-teeth  a  little  later  than  he  gets  his 
beard  and  whiskers,  or  a  little  earlier ;  but  on  the  whole, 
he  adheres  to  his  usual  order,  and  is  completely  set  off 
his  balance,  and  upset  in  his  performance,  if  that  order 
be  interfered  with  suddenly.  It  is,  however,  likely  that 
gradual  modifications  of  order  have  been  made  and  then 
adhered  to.  fr 

After  any  animal  has  reached  the  period  at  which  it 
ordinarily  begins  to  continue  its  race,  we  should  expect 
that  it  should  show  little  further  power  of  development, 
or,  at  any  rate,  that  few  great  changes  of  structure  or 
fresh  features  should  appear;  for  we  cannot  suppose 
offspring  to  remember  anything  that  happens  to  the 
parent  subsequently  to  the  parent's  ceasing  to  contain 
the  offspring  within  itself ;  from  the  average  age,  there- 
fore, of  reproduction,  offspring  would  cease  to  have  any 
further  experience  on  which  to  fall  back,  and  would 
thus  continue  to  make  the  best  use  of  what  it  already 
knew,  till  memory  failing  either  in  one  part  or  another, 
the  organism  would  begin  to  decay. 

To  this  cause  must  be  referred  the  phenomena  of  old 
age,  which  interesting  subject  I  am  unable  to  pursue 
within  the  limits  of  this  volume. 


WHAT  WE  MIGHT  EXPECT.  171 

Those  creatures  who  are  longest  in  reaching  maturity 
might  be  expected  also  to  be  the  longest  lived ;  I  am 
not  certain,  however,  how  far  what  is  called  alternate 
generation  militates  against  this  view,  but  I  do  not 
think  it  does  so  seriously. 

Lateness  of  marriage,  provided  the  constitution  of  the 
individuals  marrying  is  in  no  respect  impaired,  should 
also  tend  to  longevity. 

I  believe  that  all  the  above  will  be  found  suffi- 
ciently well  supported  by  facts.  If  so,  when  we  feel 
that  we  are  getting  old  we  should  try  and  give  our  cells 
such  treatment  as  they  will  find  it  most  easy  to  under- 
stand, through  their  experience  of  their  own  individual 
life,  which,  however,  can  only  guide  them  inferentially, 
and  to  a  very  small  extent;  and  throughout  life  we 
should  remember  the  important  bearing  which  memory 
has  upon  health,  and  both  occasionally  cross  the  memo- 
ries of  our  component  cells  with  slightly  new  experi- 
ences, and  be  careful  not  to  put  them  either  suddenly 
or  for  long  together  into  conditions  which  they  will  not 
be  able  to  understand.  Nothing  is  so  likely  to  make 
our  cells  forget  themselves,  as  neglect  of  one  or  other  of 
these  considerations.  They  will  either  fail  to  recognise 
themselves  completely,  in  which  case  we  shall  die;  or 
they  will  go  on  strike,  more  or  less  seriously  as  the  caso 
may  b^  or  perhaps,  rather,  they  will  try  and  remember 
their  usual  course,  and  fail ;  they  will  therefore  try  some 
other,  and  will  probably  make  a  mess  of  it,  as  people 
generally  do  when  they  try  to  do  things  which  they  do 
not  understand,  unless  indeed  they  have  very  excep- 
tional capacity. 


172  LIFE  AND  HABIT. 

It  also  follows  that  when  we  are  ill,  our  cells  being 
in  such  or  such  a  state  of  mind,  and  inclined  to  hold  a 
corresponding  opinion  with  more  or  less  unreasoning 
violence,  should  not  be  puzzled  more  than  they  are 
puzzled  already,  by  being  contradicted  too  suddenly; 
for  they  will  not  be  in  a  frame  of  mind  which  can 
understand  the  position  of  an  open  opponent:  they 
should  therefore  either  be  let  alone,  if  possible,  without 
notice  other  than  dignified  silence,  till  their  spleen  is 
over,  and  till  they  have  remembered  themselves;  or 
they  should  be  reasoned  with  as  by  one  who  agrees 
with  them,  and  who  is  anxious  to  see  things  as  far  as 
possible  from  their  own  point  of  view.  And  this  is 
how  experience  teaches  that  we  must  deal  with 
monomaniacs,  whom  we  simply  infuriate  by  contradic- 
tion, but  whose  delusion  we  can  sometimes  persuade 
to  hang  itself  if  we  but  give  it  sufficient  rope.  All 
which  has  its  bearing  upon  politics,  too,  at  much  sacri- 
fice, it  may  be,  of  political  principles,  but  a  politician 
who  cannot  see  principles  where  principle-mongers  fail 
to  see  them,  is  a  dangerous  person. 

I  may  say,  in  passing,  that  the  reason  why  a  small 
wound  heals,  and  leaves  no  scar,  while  a  larger  one 
leaves  a  mark  which  is  more  or  less  permanent,  may  be 
looked  for  in  the  fact  that  when  the  wound  is  only 
small,  the  damaged  cells  are  snubbed,  so  to  speak,  by 
the  vast  majority  of  the  unhurt  cells  in  their  own 
neighbourhood.  When  the  wound  is  more  serious  they 
can  stick  to  it,  and  bear  each  other  out  that  they  were 
hurt. 

III.  We  should  expect  to  find  a  predominance  of 


WHAT  WE  MIGHT  EXPECT.  173 

sexual  over  asexual  generation,  in  the  arrangements  of 
nature  for  continuing  her  various  species,  inasmuch  as 
two  heads  are  better  than  one,  and  a  locus  pcenitentice  is 
thus  given  to  the  embryo — an  opportunity  of  correct- 
ing the  experience  of  one  parent  by  that  of  the  other. 
And  this  is  what  the  more  intelligent  embryos  may  be 
supposed  to  do ;  for  there  would  seem  little  reason  to 
doubt  that  there  are  clever  embryos  and  stupid  embryos, 
with  better  or  worse  memories,  as  the  case  may  be,  of 
how  they  dealt  with  their  protoplasm  before,  and  better 
or  worse  able  to  see  how  they  can  do  better  now; 
and  that  embryos  differ  as  widely  in  intellectual  and 
moral  capacity,  and  in  a  general  sense  of  the  fitness 
of  things,  and  of  what  will  look  well  into  the  bargain, 
as  those  larger  embryos — to  wit,  children — do.  Indeed 
it  would  seem  probable  that  all  our  mental  powers 
must  go  through  a  quasi-embryological  condition,  much 
as  the  power  of  keeping,  and  wisely  spending,  money 
must  do  so,  and  that  all  the  qualities  of  human 
thought  and  character  are  to  be  found  in  the  embryo. 

Those  who  have  observed  at  what  an  early  age  differ- 
ences of  intellect  and  temper  show  themselves  in  the 
young,  for  example,  of  cats  and  dogs,  will  find  it 
difficult  to  doubt  that  from  the  very  moment  of  im- 
pregnation, and  onward,  there  has  been  a  corresponding 
difference  in  the  embryo — and  that  of  six  unborn 
puppies,  one,  we  will  say,  has  been  throughout  the 
whole  process  of  development  more  sensible  and  better 
looking — a  nicer  embryo,  in  fact — than  the  others. 

IV.  We  should  expect  to  find  that  all  species,  whether 
of  plants  or  animals,  are  occasionally  benefited  by  a  cross; 


174  LIFE  AND  HABIT. 

but  we  should  also  expect  that  a  cross  should  have  a 
tendency  to  introduce  a  disturbing  element,  if  it  be  too 
wide,  inasmuch  as  the  offspring  would  be  pulled  hither 
and  thither  by  two  conflicting  memories  or  advices,  much 
as  though  a  number  of  people  speaking  at  once  were 
without  previous  warning  to  advise  an  unhappy  per- 
former to  vary  his  ordinary  performance — one  set  of 
people  telling  him  he  has  always  hitherto  done  thus, 
and  the  other  saying  no  less  loudly  that  he  did  it  thus ; — 
and  he  were  suddenly  to  become  convinced  that  they 
each  spoke  the  truth.  In  such  a  case  he  will  either 
completely  break  down,  if  the  advice  be  too  conflict- 
ing, or  if  it  be  less  conflicting,  he  may  yet  be  so 
exhausted  by  the  one  supreme  effort  of  fusing  these 
experiences  that  he  will  never  be  able  to  perform 
again;  or  if  the  conflict  of  experience  be  not  great 
enough  to  produce  such  a  permanent  effect  as  this, 
it  will  yet,  if  it  be  at  all  serious,  probably  damage 
his  performances  on  their  next  several  occasions, 
through  his  inability  to  fuse  the  experiences  into 
a  harmonious  whole,  or,  in  other  words,  to  understand 
the  ideas  which  are  prescribed  to  him;  for  to  fuse  is 
only  to  understand. 

And  this  is  absolutely  what  we  find  in  fact.  Mr. 
Darwin  writes  concerning  hybrids  and  first  crosses: 
— "  The  male  element  may  reach  the  female  element, 
but  be  incapable  of  causing  an  embryo  to  be  developed, 
as  seems  to  have  been  the  case  with  some  of  Thuret's 
experiments  on  Fuci.  No  explanation  can  be  given 
of  these  facts  any  more  than  why  certain  trees  cannot 
be  grafted  on  others." 


WHAT  WE  MIGHT  EXPECT.  175 

I  submit  that  what  I  have  written  above  supplies  a 
very  fair  primd  facie  explanation. 

Mr.  Darwin  continues : — 

"  Lastly,  an  embryo  may  be  developed,  and  then  perish 
at  an  early  period.  This  latter  alternative  has  not  been 
sufficiently  attended  to ;  but  I  believe,  from  observa- 
tions communicated  to  me  by  Mr.  Hewitt,  who  has  had 
great  experience  in  hybridising  pheasants  and  fowls, 
that  the  early  death  of  the  embryo  is  a  very  frequent 
cause  of  sterility  in  first  crosses.  Mr.  Salter  has 
recently  given  the  results  of  an  examination  of  about 
five  hundred  eggs  produced  from  various  crosses  be- 
tween three  species  of  Gallus  and  their  hybrids ;  the 
majority  of  these  eggs  had  been  fertilised ;  and  in  the 
majority  of  the  fertilised  eggs,  the  embryos  had  either 
been  partially  developed,  and  had  then  perished,  or 
had  become  nearly  mature,  but  the  young  chickens 
had  been  unable  to  break  through  the  shell.  Of  the 
chickens  which  were  born  more  than  four-fifths  died 
within  the  first  few  days,  or  at  latest  weeks, '  without 
any  obvious  cause,  apparently  from  mere  inability  to 
live,'  so  that  from  the  five  hundred  eggs  only  twelve 
chickens  were  reared "  ("  Origin  of  Species,"  249,  ed. 
1876). 

No  wonder  the  poor  creatures  died,  distracted  as  they 
were  by  the  internal  tumult  of  conflicting  memories. 
But  they  must  have  suffered  greatly ;  and  the  Society 
for  the  Prevention  of  Cruelty  to  Animals  may  perhaps 
think  it  worth  while  to  keep  an  eye  even  on  the  em- 
bryos of  hybrids  and  first  crosses.  Five  hundred  crea- 
tures puzzled  to  death  is  not  a  pleasant  subject  for 


176  LIFE  AND  HABIT. 

contemplation.  Ten  or  a  dozen  should,  I  think,  be 
sufficient  for  the  future. 

As  regards  plants,  we  read : — 

"  Hybridised  embryos  probably  often  perish  in  like 
manner.  ...  of  which  fact  Max  "Wichura  has  given 
some  striking  cases  with  hybrid  willows.  ...  It  may 
be  here  worth  noticing,  that  in  some  cases  of  parthano- 
genesis,  the  embryos  within  the  eggs  of  silk  moths, 
•which  have  not  been  fertilised,  pass  through  their  early 
stages  of  development,  and  then  perish  like  the  embryos 
produced  by  a  cross  between  distinct  species  "  (Ibid). 

This  last  fact  would  at  first  sight  seem  to  make  against 
me,  but  we  must  consider  that  the  presence  of  a  double 
memory,  provided  it  be  not  too  conflicting,  would  be  a 
part  of  the  experience  of  the  silk  moth's  egg,  which 
might  be  then  as  fatally  puzzled  by  the  monotony  of 
a  single  memory  as  it  would  be  by  two  memories  which 
were  not  sufficiently  like  each  other.  So  that  failure 
here  must  be  referred  to  the  utter  absence  of  that 
little  internal  stimulant  of  slightly  conflicting  memory 
which  the  creature  has  always  hitherto  experienced, 
and  without  which  it  fails  to  recognise  itself.  In  either 
case,  then,  whether  with  hybrids  or  in  cases  of  partheno- 
genesis, the  early  death  of  the  embryo  is  due  to  ina- 
bility to  recollect,  owing  to  a  fault  in  the  chain  of 
associated  ideas.  All  the  facts  here  given  are  an  excel- 
lent illustration  of  the  principle,  elsewhere  insisted  upon 
by  Mr.  Darwin,  that  any  great  and  sudden  change  of 
surroundings  has  a  tendency  to  induce  sterility;  on 
which  head  he  writes  ("Plants  and  Animals  under 
Domestication,"  vol.  ii.  p.  143,  ed.  1875) : — 


WHAT  WE  MIGHT  EXPECT.  177 

"  It  would  appear  that  any  change  in  the  habits  of 
life,  whatever  their  habits  may  be,  if  great  enough, 
tends  to  affect  in  an  inexplicable  manner  the  powers 
of  reproduction." 

And  again  on  the  next  page : — 

"  Finally,  we  must  conclude,  limited  though  the 
conclusion  is,  that  changed  conditions  of  life  have  an 
especial  power  of  acting  injuriously  on  the  reproduc- 
tive system.  The  whole  case  is  quite  peculiar,  for 
these  organs,  though  not  diseased,  are  thus  rendered 
incapable  of  performing  their  proper  functions,  or  per- 
form them  imperfectly." 

One  is  inclined  to  doubt  whether  the  blame  may  not 
rest  with  the  inability  on  the  part  of  the  creature  re- 
produced to  recognise  the  new  surroundings,  and  hence 
with  its  failing  to  know  itself.  And  this  seems  to  be 
in  some  measure  supported — but  not  in  such  a  manner 
as  I  can  hold  to  be  quite  satisfactory — by  the  con- 
tinuation of  the  passage  in  the  "Origin  of  Species,"  from 
which  I  have  just  been  quoting — for  Mr.  Darwin  goes 
on  to  say : — 

"  Hybrids,  however,  are  differently  circumstanced 
before  and  after  birth.  When  born,  and  living  in  a 
country  where  their  parents  live,  they  are  generally 
placed  under  suitable  conditions  of  life.  But  a  hybrid 
partakes  of  only  half  of  the  nature  and  condition  of 
its  mother ;  it  may  therefore  before  birth,  as  long  as  it 
is  nourished  within  its  mother's  womb,  or  within  the 
egg  or  seed  produced  by  its  mother,  be  exposed  to  con- 
ditions in  some  degree  unsuitable,  and  consequently 
be  liable  to  perish  at  an  early  period.  .  .  ."  After  which, 


i;8  LIFE  AND  HABIT. 

however,  the  conclusion  arrived  at  is,  that, "  after  all,  the 
cause  more  probably  lies  in  some  imperfection  in  the 
original  act  of  impregnation,  causing  the  embryo  to  be 
imperfectly  developed  rather  than  in  the  conditions  to 
which  it  is  subsequently  exposed."  A  conclusion  which 
I  am  not  prepared  to  accept. 

Eeturning  to  my  second  alternative,  that  is  to  say,  to 
the  case  of  hybrids  which  are  born  well  developed  and 
healthy,  but  nevertheless  perfectly  sterile,  it  is  less 
obvious  why,  having  succeeded  in  understanding  the 
conflicting  memories  of  their  parents,  they  should  fail 
to  produce  offspring ;  but  I  do  not  think  the  reader  will 
feel  surprised  that  this  should  be  the  case.  The  follow- 
ing anecdote,  true  or  false,  may  not  be  out  of  place 
here : — 

"  Plutarch  tells  us  of  a  magpie,  belonging  to  a  barber 
at  Home,  which  could  imitate  to  a  nicety  almost  every 
word  it  heard.  Some  trumpets  happened  one  day  to  be 
sounded  before  the  shop,  and  for  a  day  or  two  after- 
wards the  magpie  was  quite  mute,  and  seemed  pensive 
and  melancholy.  All  who  knew  it  were  greatly  sur- 
prised at  its  silence ;  and  it  was  supposed  that  the 
sound  of  the  trumpets  had  so  stunned  it  as  to  deprive 
it  at  once  of  both  voice  and  hearing.  It  soon  appeared, 
however,  that  this  was  far  from  being  the  case;  for, 
says  Plutarch,  the  bird  had  been  all  the  time  occupied 
in  profound  meditation,  studying  how  to  imitate  the 
sound  of  the  trumpets ;  and  when  at  last  master  of  it, 
the  magpie,  to  the  astonishment  of  all  its  friends,  sud- 
denly broke  its  long  silence  by  a  perfect  imitation  of 
the  flourish  of  trumpets  it  had  heard,  observing  with 


WHAT  WE  MIGHT  EXPECT.  179 

the  greatest  exactness  all  the  repetitions,  stops,  and 
changes.  The  acquisition  of  this  lesson  had,  however, 
exhausted  the  whole  of  the  magpie's  stock  of  intellect,  for  it 
made  it  forget  everything  it  had  learned  before  "  ("  Percy 
Anecdotes,"  Instinct,  p.  166). 

Or,  perhaps,  more  seriously,  the  memory  of  every  im- 
pregnate ovum  from  which  every  ancestor  of  a  mule,  for 
example,  has  sprung,  has  reverted  to  a  very  long  period 
of  time  during  which  its  forefathers  have  been  creatures 
like  that  which  it  is  itself  now  going  to  become :  thus, 
the  impregnate  ovum  from  which  the  mule's  father  was 
developed  remembered  nothing  but  horse  memories; 
but  it  felt  its  faith  in  these  supported  by  the  recollec- 
tion of  a  vast  number  of  previous  generations,  in  which 
it  was,  to  all  intents  and  purposes,  what  it  now  is.  In 
like  manner,  the  impregnate  ovum  from  which  the 
mule's  mother  was  developed  would  be  backed  by  the 
assurance  that  it  had  done  what  it  is  going  to  do  now 
a  hundred  thousand  times  already.  All  would  thus 
be  plain  sailing.  A  horse  and  a  donkey  would  result. 
These  two  are  brought  together;  an  impregnate  ovum 
is  produced  which  finds  an  unusual  conflict  of  memory 
between  the  two  lines  of  its  ancestors,  nevertheless,  being 
accustomed  to  some  conflict,  it  manages  to  get  over  the 
difficulty,  as  on  either  side  it  finds  itself  backed  by  a  very 
long  series  of  sufficiently  steady  memory.  A  mule  results 
— a  creature  so  distinctly  different  from  either  horse  or 
donkey,  that  reproduction  is  baffled,  owing  to  the  crea- 
ture's having  nothing  but  its  own  knowledge  of  itself 
to  fall  back  upon,  behind  which  there  comes  an  imme- 
diate dislocation,  or  fault  of  memory,  which  is  sufficient 


180  LIFE  AND  HABIT. 

to  bar  identity,  and  hence  reproduction,  by  rendering 
too  severe  an  appeal  to  reason  necessary — for  no  crea- 
ture can  reproduce  itself  on  the  shallow  foundation 
which  reason  can  alone  give.  Ordinarily,  therefore, 
the  hybrid,  or  the  spermatozoon  or  ovum,  which  it 
may  throw  off  (as  the  case  may  be),  finds  one  single  ex- 
perience too  small  to  give  it  the  necessary  faith,  on  the 
strength  of  which  even  to  try  to  reproduce  itself.  In 
other  cases  the  hybrid  itself  has  failed  to  be  developed ; 
in  others  the  hybrid,  or  first  cross,  is  almost  fertile ;  in 
others  it  is  fertile,  but  produces  depraved  issue.  The 
result  will  vary  with  the  capacities  of  the  creatures 
crossed,  and  the  amount  of  conflict  between  their 
several  experiences. 

The  above  view  would  remove  all  difficulties  out  of 
the  way  of  evolution,  in  so  far  as  the  sterility  of  hybrids 
is  concerned.  For  it  would  thus  appear  that  this  steri- 
lity has  nothing  to  do  with  any  supposed  immutable 
or  fixed  limits  of  species,  but  results  simply  from  the 
same  principle  which  prevents  old  friends,  no  matter 
how  intimate  in  youth,  from  returning  to  their  old  in- 
timacy after  a  lapse  of  years,  during  which  they  have 
been  subjected  to  widely  different  influences,  inas- 
much as  they  will  each  have  contracted  new  habits, 
and  have  got  into  new  ways,  which  they  do  not  like 
now  to  alter. 

We  should  expect  that  our  domesticated  plants  and 
animals  should  vary  most,  inasmuch  as  these  have  been 
subjected  to  changed  conditions  which  would  disturb 
the  memory,  and,  breaking  the  chain  of  recollection, 
through  failure  of  some  one  or  other  of  the  associated 


WHAT  WE  MIGHT  EXPECT.  181 

ideas,  would  thus  directly  and  most  markedly  affect  the 
reproductive  system.  Every  reader  of  Mr.  Darwin  will 
know  that  this  is  what  actually  happens,  and  also  that 
when  once  a  plant  or  animal  begins  to  vary,  it  will  pro- 
bably vary  a  good  deal  further ;  which,  again,  is  what  we 
should  expect — the  disturbance  of  the  memory  intro- 
ducing a  fresh  factor  of  disturbance,  which  has  to  be 
dealt  with  by  the  offspring  as  it  best  may.  Mr.  Darwin 
writes:  "All  our  domesticated  productions,  with  the 
rarest  exceptions,  vary  far  more  than  natural  species " 
("Plants  and  Animals,"  &c.,  vol.  ii.  p.  241,  ed.  1875). 

On  my  third  supposition,  i.e.,  when  the  difference 
between  parents  has  not  been  great  enough  to  baffle 
reproduction  on  the  part  of  the  first  cross,  but  when 
the  histories  of  the  father  and  mother  have  been,  never- 
theless, widely  different — as  in  the  case  of  Europeans 
and  Indians — we  should  expect  to  have  a  race  of  off- 
spring who  should  seem  to  be  quite  clear  only  about 
those  points,  on  which  their  progenitors  on  both  sides 
were  in  accord  before  the  manifold  divergencies  in  their 
experiences  commenced;  that  is  to  say,  the  offspring 
should  show  a  tendency  to  revert  to  an  early  savage 
condition. 

That  this  indeed  occurs  may  be  seen  from  Mr.  Dar- 
win's "  Plants  and  Animals  under  Domestication  "  (vol 
ii.  p.  21,  ed.  1875),  where  we  find  that  travellers  in  all 
parts  of  the  world  have  frequently  remarked  "on  the 
degraded  state  and  savage  condition  of  crossed  races  of 
man."  A  few  lines  lower  down  Mr.  Darwin  tells  us 
that  he  was  himself  "struck  with  the  fact  that,  in 
South  America,  men  of  complicated  descent  between 


1 82  LIFE  AND  HABIT. 

Negroes,  Indians,  and  Spaniards  seldom  had,  whatever 
the  cause  might  be,  a  good  expression.  "  Livingstone  " 
(continues  Mr.  Darwin)  "  remarks, '  It  is  unaccountable 
why  half-castes  are  so  much  more  cruel  than  the  Portu- 
guese, but  such  is  undoubtedly  the  case.'  An  inhabitant 
remarked  to  Livingstone,  '  God  made  white  men,  and 
God  made  black  men,  but  the  devil  made  half-castes.' " 
A  little  further  on  Mr.  Darwin  says  that  we  may  "  per- 
haps infer  that  the  degraded  state  of  so  many  half-castes 
is  in  part  due  to  reversion  to  a  primitive  and  savage  con- 
dition, induced  by  the  act  of  crossing,  even  if  mainly  due 
to  the  unfavourable  moral  conditions  under  which  they 
are  generally  reared."  Why  the  crossing  should  pro- 
duce this  particular  tendency  would  seem  to  be  intelli- 
gible enough,  if  the  fashion  and  instincts  of  offspring  are, 
in  any  case,  nothing  but  the  memories  of  its  past  exist- 
ences ;  but  it  would  hardly  seem  to  be  so  upon  any  of 
the  theories  now  generally  accepted ;  as,  indeed,  is  very 
readily  admitted  by  Mr.  Darwin  himself,  who  even,  as 
regards  purely-bred  animals  and  plants,  remarks  that 
"  we  are  quite  unable  to  assign  any  proximate  cause " 
for  their  tendency  to  at  times  reassume  long  lost  char- 
acters. 

If  the  reader  will  follow  for  himself  the  remaining 
phenomena  of  reversion,  he  will,  I  believe,  find  them  all 
explicable  on  the  theory  that  they  are  due  to  memory 
of  past  experiences  fused,  and  modified — at  times  speci- 
fically and  definitely — by  changed  conditions.  There  is, 
however,  one  apparently  very  important  phenomenon 
which  I  do  not  at  this  moment  see  how  to  connect  with 
memory,  namely,  the  tendency  on  the  part  of  offspring 


WHAT  WE  MIGHT  EXPECT.  183 

to  revert  to  an  earlier  impregnation.  Mr.  Darwin's 
"  Provisional  Theory  of  Pangenesis  "  seemed  to  afford  a 
satisfactory  explanation  of  this;  but  the  connection 
with  memory  was  not  immediately  apparent.  I  think 
it  likely,  however,  that  this  difficulty  will  vanish  on 
further  consideration,  so  I  will  not  do  more  than  call 
attention  to  it  here. 

The  instincts  of  certain  neuter  insects  hardly  bear 
upon  reversion,  but  will  be  dealt  with  at  some  length 
in  Chapter  XII. 

V.  We  should  expect  to  find,  as  was  insisted  on  in  the 
preceding  section  in  reference  to  the  sterility  of  hybrids, 
that  it  required  many,  or  at  any  rate  several,  genera- 
tions of  changed  habits  before  a  sufficiently  deep  im- 
pression could  be  made  upon  the  living  being  (who  must 
be  regarded  always  as  one  person  in  his  whole  line  of 
ascent  or  descent)  for  it  to  be  unconsciously  remem- 
bered by  him,  when  making  himself  anew  in  any  suc- 
ceeding generation,  and  thus  to  make  him  modify  his 
method  of  procedure  during  his  next  embryological 
development.  Nevertheless,  we  should  expect  to  find 
that  sometimes  a  very  deep  single  impression  made 
upon  a  living  organism,  should  be  remembered  by  it, 
even  when  it  is  next  in  an  embryonic  condition. 

That  this  is  so,  we  find  from  Mr.  Darwin,  who  writes 
("  Plants  and  Animals  under  Domestication,"  vol.  ii. 
p.  57,  ed.  1875) — "  There  is  ample  evidence  that  the  effect 
of  mutilations  and  of  accidents,  especially,  or  perhaps 
exclusively,  when  followed  by  disease"  (which  would 
certainly  intensify  the  impression  made),  "  are  occasion- 
ally inherited.  There  can  be  no  doubt  that  the  evil 


1 84  LIFE  AND  HABIT. 

effects  of  the  long  continued  exposure  of  the  parent  to 
injurious  conditions  are  sometimes  transmitted  to  the 
offspring."  As  regards  impressions  of  a  less  striking 
character,  it  is  so  universally  admitted  that  they  are  not 
observed  to  be  repeated  in  what  is  called  the  offspring, 
until  they  have  been  confirmed  in  what  is  called  the 
parent,  for  several  generations,  but  that  after  several 
generations,  more  or  fewer  as  the  case  may  be,  they 
often  are  transmitted — that  it  seems  unnecessary  to 
say  more  upon  the  matter.  Perhaps,  however,  the 
following  passage  from  Mr.  Darwin  may  be  admitted 
as  conclusive : — 

"  That  they  "  (acquired  actions)  "  are  inherited,  we  see 
with  horses  in  certain  transmitted  paces,  such  as  can- 
tering and  ambling,  which  are  not  natural  to  them — in 
the  pointing  of  young  pointers,  and  the  setting  of  young 
setters — in  the  peculiar  manner  of  flight  of  certain 
breeds  of  the  pigeon,  &c.  We  have  analogous  cases 
with  mankind  in  the  inheritance  of  tricks  or  unusual 
gestures."  ....  ("  Expression  of  the  Emotions,"  p.  29). 
In  another  place  Mr.  Darwin  writes : — 
"  How  again  can  we  explain  the  inherited  effects  of  the 
use  or  disuse  of  particular  organs  ?  The  domesticated 
duck  flies  less  and  walks  more  than  the  wild  duck,  and 
its  limb  bones  have  become  diminished  and  increased 
in  a  corresponding  manner  in  comparison  with  those  of 
the  wild  duck.  A  horse  is  trained  to  certain  paces,  and 
the  colt  inherits  similar  consensual  movements.  The 
domesticated  rabbit  becomes  tame  from  close  confine- 
ment ;  the  dog  intelligent  from  associating  with  man ; 
the  retriever  is  taught  to  fetch  and  carry ;  and  these 


WHAT  WE  MIGHT  EXPECT.  185 

mental  endowments  and  bodily  powers  are  all  inherited  " 
("Plants  and  Animals,"  &c.,  vol.  ii.  p.  367,  ed.  1875). 

"Nothing,"  he  continues,  "in  the  whole  circuit  of 
physiology  is  more  wonderful.  How  can  the  use  or 
disuse  of  a  particular  limb,  or  of  the  brain,  affect  a 
small  aggregate  of  reproductive  cells,  seated  in  a  distant 
part  of  the  body  in  such  a  manner  that  the  being  deve- 
loped from  these  cells  inherits  the  character  of  one  or 
both  parents  ?  Even  an  imperfect  answer  to  this  ques- 
tion would  be  satisfactory  "  ("  Plants  and  Animals,"  &c. 
vol.  ii.  p.  367,  ed.  1875). 

With  such  an  imperfect  answer  will  I  attempt  to 
satisfy  the  reader,  as  to  say  that  there  appears  to  be 
that  kind  of  continuity  of  existence  and  sameness  of 
personality,  between  parents  and  offspring,  which  would 
lead  us  to  expect  that  the  impressions  made  upon  the 
parent  should  be  epitomised  in  the  offspring,  when  they 
have  been  or  have  become  important  enough,  through 
repetition  in  the  history  of  several  so-called  existences 
to  have  earned  a  place  in  that  smaller  edition,  which 
is  issued  from  generation  to  generation;  or,  in  other 
words,  when  they  have  been  made  so  deeply,  either 
at  one  blow  or  through  many,  that  the  offspring  can 
remember  them.  In  practice  we  observe  this  to  be 
the  case — so  that  the  answer  lies  in  the  assertion  that 
offspring  and  parent,  being  in  one  sense  but  the  same 
individual,  there  is  no  great  wonder  that,  in  one  sense, 
the  first  should  remember  what  had  happened  to  the 
latter ;  and  that  too,  much  in  the  same  way  as  the  in- 
dividual remembers  the  events  in  the  earlier  history 
of  what  he  calls  his  own  lifetime,  but  condensed,  and 


1 86  LIFE  AND  HABIT. 

pruned  of  detail,  and  remembered  as  by  one  who 
has  had  a  host  of  other  matters  to  attend  to  in  the 
interim. 

It  is  thus  easy  to  understand  why  such  a  rite  as  cir- 
cumcision, though  practised  during  many  ages,  should 
have  produced  little,  if  any,  modification  tending  to 
make  circumcision  unnecessary.  On  the  view  here  sup- 
ported such  modification  would  be  more  surprising  than 
not,  for  unless  the  impression  made  upon  the  parent  was 
of  a  grave  character — and  probably  unless  also  aggra- 
vated by  subsequent  confusion  of  memories  in  the  cells 
surrounding  the  part  originally  impressed — the  parent 
himself  would  not  be  sufficiently  impressed  to  prevent 
him  from  reproducing  himself,  as  he  had  already  done 
upon  an  infinite  number  of  past  occasions.  The  child, 
therefore,  in  the  womb  would  do  what  the  father  in  the 
womb  had  done  before  him,  nor  should  any  trace  of 
memory  concerning  circumcision  be  expected  till  the 
eighth  day  after  birth,  when,  but  for  the  fact  that  the 
impression  in  this  case  is  forgotten  almost  as  soon  as 
made,  some  slight  presentiment  of  coming  discomfort 
might,  after  a  large  number  of  generations,  perhaps  be 
looked  for  as  a  general  rule.  It  would  not,  however, 
be  surprising,  that  the  effect  of  circumcision  should  be 
occasionally  inherited,  and  it  would  appear  as  though 
this  was  sometimes  actually  the  case. 

The  question  should  turn  upon  whether  the  disuse 
of  an  organ  has  arisen  : — 

I.  From  an  internal  desire  on  the  part  of  the  crea- 
ture disusing  it,  to  be  quit  of  an  organ  which  it  finds 
troublesome. 


WHAT  WE  MIGHT  EXPECT.  187 

2.  From  changed  conditions  and  habits  which  render 
the  organ  no  longer  necessary,  or  which  lead  the  crea- 
ture to  lay  greater  stress  on  certain  other  organs  or 
modifications. 

3.  From  the  wish  of  others  outside  itself;  the  effect 
produced  in  this  case  being  perhaps  neither  very  good 
nor  very  bad  for  the  individual,  and  resulting  in  LO 
grave  impression  upon  the  organism  as  a  whole. 

4.  From  a  single  deep  impression  on  a  parent,  affect- 
ing both  himself  as   a  whole,  and  gravely  confusing 
the  memories  of  the   cells  to   be  reproduced,  or  his 
memories  in  respect  of  those  cells — according  as  one 
adopts  Pangenesis  and  supposes  a  memory  to  "  run " 
each  gemmule,  or  as  one  supposes  one  memory  to  "  run  " 
the  whole  impregnate  ovum — a  compromise  between 
these  two  views  being  nevertheless  perhaps  possible, 
inasmuch  as  the  combined  memories  of  all  the  cells 
may  possibly  be  the  memory  which  "  runs  "  the  impreg- 
nate ovum,  just  as  we  are  ourselves  the  combination  of 
all  our  cells,  each  one  of  which  is  both  autonomous, 
and  also  takes  its   share  in  the  central  government. 
But  within  the  limits  of  this  volume  it  is  absolutely 
impossible  for  me  to  go  into  this  question. 

In  the  first  case — under  which  some  instances  which 
belong  more  strictly  to  the  fourth  would  sometimes, 
but  rarely,  come — the  organ  should  soon  go,  and  sooner 
or  later  leave  no  rudiment,  though  still  perhaps  to  be 
found  crossing  the  life  of  the  embryo,  and  then  dis- 
appearing. 

In  the  second  it  should  go  more  slowly,  and  leave,  it 
may  be,  a  rudimentary  structure.  : . 


1 88  LIFE  AND  HABIT. 

In  the  third  it  should  show  little  or  no  sign  of  natural 
decrease  for  a  very  long  time. 

In  the  fourth  there  may  be  absolute  and  total  steri- 
lity, or  sterility  in  regard  to  the  particular  organ,  or  a 
scar  which  shall  show  that  the  memory  of  the  wound 
and  of  each  step  in  the  process  of  healing  has  been 
remembered ;  or  there  may  be  simply  such  disturbance 
in  the  reproduced  organ  as  shall  show  a  confused 
recollection  of  injury.  There  may  be  infinite  gradations 
between  the  first  and  last  of  these  possibilities. 

I  think  that  the  facts,  as  given  by  Mr.  Darwin 
("  Plants  and  Animals,"  &c.,  vol.  i.  pp.  466-472,  ed. 
1875),  will  bear  out  the  above  to  the  satisfaction  of  the 
reader.  I  can,  however,  only  quote  the  following 
passage  :— 

"...  Brown  Se'quard  has  bred  during  thirty  years 
many  thousand  guinea-pigs,  .  .  .  nor  has  he  ever  seen  a 
guinea-pig  born  without  toes  which  was  not  the  offspring 
of  parents  'which  had  gnawed  off  their  awn  toes,  owing 
to  the  sciatic  nerve  having  been  divided.  Of  this  fact 
thirteen  instances  were  carefully  recorded,  and  a  greater 
number  were  seen ;  yet  Brown  Se'quard  speaks  of  such 
cases  as  among  the  rarer  forms  of  inheritance.  It  is  a 
still  more  interesting  fact — '  that  the  sciatic  nerve  in 
the  congenitally  toeless  animal  has  inherited  the  power 
of  passing  through  all  the  different  morbid  states  which 
have  occurred  in  one  of  its  parents  from  the  time  of 
division  till  after  its  reunion  with  the  peripheric  end. 
It  is  not  therefore  the  power  of  simply  performing  an 
action  which  is  inherited,  but  the  power  of  performing 
a  whole  series  of  actions  in  a  certain  order.' " 


WHAT  WE  MIGHT  EXPECT.  189 

I  feel  inclined  to  say  it  is  not  merely  the  original 
wound  that  is  remembered,  but  the  whole  process  of 
cure  which  is  now  accordingly  repeated.  Brown  Sequard 
concludes,  as  Mr.  Darwin  tells  us,  "  that  what  is  trans- 
mitted is  the  morbid  state  of  the  nervous  system,"  due 
to  the  operation  performed  on  the  parents. 

A  little  lower  down  Mr.  Darwin  writes  that  Pro- 
fessor Eolleston  has  given  him  two  cases — "  namely,  of 
two  men,  one  of  whom  had  his  knee,  and  the  other  his 
cheek,  severely  cut,  and  both  had  children  born  with 
exactly  the  same  spot  marked  or  scarred." 

VI.  When,  however,  an  impression  has  once  reached 
transmission  point — whether  it  be  of  the  nature  of  a 
sudden  striking  thought,  which  makes  its  mark  deeply 
then  and  there,  or  whether  it  be  the  result  of  smaller 
impressions  repeated  until  the  nail,  so  to  speak,  has  been 
driven  home — we  should  expect  that  it  should  be  remem- 
bered by  the  offspring  as  something  which  he  has  done 
all  his  life,  and  which  he  has  therefore  no  longer  any 
occasion  to  learn ;  he  will  act,  therefore,  as  people  say, 
instinctively.  No  matter  how  complex  and  difficult  the 
process,  if  the  parents  have  done  it  sufficiently  often 
(that  is  to  say,  for  a  sufficient  number  of  generations), 
the  offspring  will  remember  the  fact  when  association 
wakens  the  memory ;  it  will  need  no  instruction,  and 
— unless  when  it  has  been  taught  to  look  for  it  during 
many  generations — will  expect  none.  This  may  be 
seen  in  the  case  of  the  humming-bird  sphinx  moth, 
which,  as  Mr.  Darwin  writes,  "  shortly  after  its  emer- 
gence from  the  cocoon,  as  shown  by  the  bloom  on  its 
unruffled  scales,  may  be  seen  poised  stationary  in  the 


190  LIFE  AND  HABIT. 

air  with  its  long  hair-like  proboscis  uncurled,  and  in- 
serted into  the  minute  orifices  of  flowers ;  and  no  one 
I  believe  has  ever  seen  this  moth  learning  to  perform 
its  difficult  task,  which  requires  such  unerring  aim ' 
("  Expression  of  the  Emotions,"  p.  30). 

And,  indeed,  when  we  consider  that  after  a  time  the 
most  complex  and  difficult  actions  come  to  be  per- 
formed by  man  without  the  least  effort  or  consciousness 
— that  offspring  cannot  be  considered  as  anything  but 
a  continuation  of  the  parent  life,  whose  past  habits  and 
experiences  it  epitomises  when  they  have  been  suffi- 
ciently often  repeated  to  produce  a  lasting  impression 
— that  consciousness  of  memory  vanishes  on  the  mem- 
ory's becoming  intense,  as  completely  as  the  conscious- 
ness of  complex  and  difficult  movements  vanishes  as 
soon  as  they  have  been  sufficiently  practised — and 
finally,  that  the  real  presence  of  memory  is  testified 
rather  by  performance  of  the  repeated  action  on  recur- 
rence of  like  surroundings,  than  by  consciousness  of 
recollecting  on  the  part  of  the  individual — so  that 
not  only  should  there  be  no  reasonable  bar  to  our  attri- 
buting the  whole  range  of  the  more  complex  instinctive 
actions,  from  first  to  last,  to  memory  pure  and  simple, 
no  matter  how  marvellous  they  may  be,  but  rather 
that  there  is  go  much  to  compel  us  to  do  so,  that  we 
find  it  difficult  to  conceive  how  any  other  view  can 
have  been  ever  taken — when,  I  say,  we  consider  all 
these  facts,  we  should  rather  feel  surprise  that  the  hawk 
and  sparrow  still  teach  their  offspring  to  fly,  than  that 
the  humming-bird  sphinx  moth  should  need  no 
teacher. 


WHAT  WE  MIGHT  EXPECT.  191 

The  phenomena,  then,  which  we  observe  are  exactly 
those  which  we  should  expect  to  find. 

VII.  We  should  also  expect  that  the  memory  of 
animals,  as  regards  their  earlier  existences,  was  solely 
stimulated  by  association.  For  we  find,  from  Prof. 
Bain,  that  "actions,  sensations,  and  states  of  feeling 
occurring  together,  or  in  close  succession,  tend  to  grow 
together  or  cohere  in  such  a  way  that  when  any  one  of 
them  is  afterwards  presented  to  the  mind,  the  others 
are  apt  to  be  brought  up  in  idea "  ("  The  Senses  and 
the  Intellect,"  2d  ed.  1864,  p.  332).  And  Prof.  Huxley 
says  ("Elementary  Lessons  in  Physiology,"  5th  ed.  1872, 
p.  306),  "  It  may  be  laid  down  as  a  rule  that  if  any 
two  mental  states  be  called  up  together,  or  in  succes- 
sion, with  due  frequency  and  vividness,  the  subsequent 
production  of  the  one  of  them  will  suffice  to  call  up  the 
other,  and  that  whether  we  desire  it  or  not"  I  would  go 
one  step  further,  and  would  say  not  only  whether  we 
desire  it  or  not,  but  ivhcthcr  we  are  av:arc  that  the  idea 
has  ever  before  been  called  up  in  our  minds  or  not.  I 
should  say  that  I  have  quoted  both  the  above  passages 
from  Mr.  Darwin's  "  Expression  of  the  Emotions  "  (p.  30, 
ed.  1872). 

We  should,  therefore,  expect  that  when  the  offspring 
found  itself  in  the  presence  of  objects  which  had  called 
up  such  and  such  ideas  for  a  sufficient  number  of 
generations,  that  is  to  say,  "with  due  frequency  and 
vividness  " — it  being  of  the  same  age  as  its  parents 
were,  and  generally  in  like  case  as  when  the  ideas  were 
called  up  in  the  minds  of  the  parents — the  same  ideas 
should  also  be  called  up  in  the  minds  of  the  offspring 


192  LIFE  AND  HABIT. 

"wlwthcr  tlmj  desire  it  or  not;"  and,  I  would  say  also, 
"  whether  they  recognise  the  ideas  as  having  ever  before 
"been  present  to  them  or  not." 

I  think  we  might  also  expect  that  no  other  force, 
save  that  of  association,  should  have  power  to  kindle, 
so  to  speak,  into  the  flame  of  action  the  atomic  spark  of 
memory,  which  we  can  alone  suppose  to  be  transmitted 
from  one  generation  to  another. 

That  both  plants  and  animals  do  as  we  should  expect 
of  them  in  this  respect  is  plain,  not  only  from  the  per- 
formance of  the  most  intricate  and  difficult  actions — 
difficult  both  physically  and  intellectually — at  an  age, 
and  under  circumstances  which  preclude  all  possibility 
of  what  we  call  instruction,  but  from  the  fact  that 
deviations  from  the  parental  instinct,  or  rather  the 
recurrence  of  a  memory,  unless  in  connection  with  the 
accustomed  train  of  associations,  is  of  comparatively  rare 
occurrence ;  the  result,  commonly,  of  some  one  of  the 
many  memories  about  which  we  know  no  more  than 
we  do  of  the  memory  which  enables  a  cat  to  find  her 
way  home  after  a  hundred-mile  journey  by  train,  and 
shut  up  in  a  hamper,  or,  perhaps  even  more  commonly, 
of  abnormal  treatment. 

VIII.  If,  then,  memory  depends  on  association,  we 
should  expect  two  corresponding  phenomena  in  the  case 
of  plants  and  animals — namely,  that  they  should  show 
a  tendency  to  resume  feral  habits  on  being  turned 
wild  after  several  generations  of  domestication,  and  also 
that  peculiarities  should  tend  to  show  themselves  at  a 
corresponding  age  in  the  offspring  and  in  the  parents. 
As  regards  the  tendency  to  resume  feral  habits,  Mr. 


WHAT  WE  MIGHT  EXPECT.  193 

Darwin,  though  apparently  of  opinion  that  the  tendency 
to  do  this  has  been  much  exaggerated,  yet  does  not 
doubt  that  such  a  tendency  exists,  as  shown  by  well 
authenticated  instances.  He  writes:  "It  has  been 
repeatedly  asserted  in  the  most  positive  manner  by 
various  authors  that  feral  animals  and  plants  invariably 
return  to  their  primitive  specific  type." 

This  shows,  at  any  rate,  that  there  is  a  considerable 
opinion  to  this  effect  among  observers  generally. 

He  continues :  "  It  is  curious  on  what  little  evidence 
this  belief  rests.  Many  of  our  domesticated  animals 
could  not  subsist  in  a  wild  state," — so  that  there  is  no 
knowing  whether  they  would  or  would  not  revert. 
"  In  several  cases  we  do  not  know  the  aboriginal  parent 
species,  and  cannot  tell  whether  or  not  there  has  been 
any  close  degree  of  reversion."  So  that  here,  too,  there 
is  at  any  rate  no  evidence  against  the  tendency ;  the 
conclusion,  however,  is  that,  notwithstanding  the  defi- 
ciency of  positive  evidence  to  warrant  the  general 
belief  as  to  the  force  of  the  tendency,  yet  "  the  simple 
fact  of  animals  and  plants  becoming  feral  does  cause 
some  tendency  to  revert  to  the  primitive  state,"  and  he 
tells  us  that  "  when  variously-coloured  tame  rabbits  are 
turned  out  in  Europe,  they  generally  re-acquire  the  col- 
ouring of  the  wild  animal ;  "  there  can  be  no  doubt,"  he 
says,  "  that  this  really  does  occur,"  though  he  seems  in- 
clined to  account  for  it  by  the  fact  that  oddly-coloured 
and  conspicuous  animals  would  suffer  much  from  beasts 
of  prey  and  from  being  easily  shot.  "  The  best  known 
case  of  reversion,"  he  continues,  "and  that  on  which 
the  widely-spread  belief  in  its  universality  apparently 


194  LIFE  AND  HABIT. 

rests,  is  that  of  pigs.  These  animals  have  run  wild  in 
the  West  Indies,  South  America,  and  the  Falkland 
Islands,  and  have  everywhere  re-acquired  the  dark 
colour,  the  thick  bristles,  and  great  tusks  of  the  wild 
boar;  and  the  young  have  re-acquired  longitudinal 
stripes."  And  on  page  22  of  "Plants  and  Animals 
under  Domestication"  (vol.  ii.  ed.  1875)  we  find  that 
"  the  re-appearance  of  coloured,  longitudinal  stripes  on 
young  feral  pigs  cannot  be  attributed  to  the  direct 
action  of  external  conditions.  In  this  case,  and  in 
many  others,  we  can  only  say  that  any  change  in  the 
habits  of  life  apparently  favours  a  tendency,  inherent  or 
latent,  in  the  species  to  return  to  the  primitive  state." 
On  which  one  cannot  but  remark  that  though  any 
change  may  favour  such  tendency,  yet  the  return  to 
original  habits  and  surroundings  appears  to  do  so  in 
a  way  so  marked  as  not  to  be  readily  referable  to  any 
other  cause  than  that  of  association  and  memory — the 
creature,  in  fact,  having  got  into  its  old  groove,  remem- 
bers it,  and  takes  to  all  its  old  ways. 

As  regards  the  tendency  to  inherit  changes  (whether 
embryonic,  or  during  post-natal  development  as  ordi- 
narily observed  in  any  species),  or  peculiarities  of  habit 
or  form  which  do  not  partake  of  the  nature  of  disease, 
it  must  be  sufficient  to  refer  the  reader  to  Mr.  Dar- 
win's remarks  upon  this  subject  ("  Plants  and  Animals 
Under  Domestication,"  vol.  ii.  pp.  51-57,  ed.  1875). 
The  existence  of  the  tendency  is  not  likely  to  be  de- 
nied. The  instances  given  by  Mr.  Darwin  are  strictly 
to  the  point  as  regards  all  ordinary  developmental  and 
metamorphic  changes,  and  even  as  regards  transmitted 


WHAT  WE  MIGHT  EXPECT.  195 

acquired  actions,  and  tricks  acquired  before  the  time 
when  the  offspring  has  issued  from  the  body  of  the 
parent,  or  on  an  average  of  many  generations  does  so ; 
but  it  cannot  for  a  moment  be  supposed  that  the  off- 
spring knows  by  inheritance  anything  about  what 
happens  to  the  parent  subsequently  to  the  offspring's 
being  born.  Hence  the  appearance  of  diseases  in  the 
offspring,  at  comparatively  late  periods  in  life,  but  at 
the  same  age  as,  or  earlier,  than  in  the  parents,  must 
be  regarded  as  due  to  the  fact  that  in  each  case  the 
machine  having  been  made  after  the  same  pattern 
(which  is  due  to  memory),  is  liable  to  have  the  same 
weak  points,  and  to  break  down  after  a  similar  amount 
of  wear  and  tear ;  but  after  less  wear  and  tear  in  the 
case  of  the  offspring  than  in  that  of  the  parent,  because 
a  diseased  organism  is  commonly  a  deteriorating  organ- 
ism, and  if  repeated  at  all  closely,  and  without  repent- 
ance and  amendment  of  life,  will  be  repeated  for  the 
worse.  If  we  do  not  improve,  we  grow  worse.  This, 
at  least,  is  what  we  observe  daily. 

Nor  again  can  we  believe,  as  some  have  fancifully 
imagined,  that  the  remembrance  of  any  occurrence  of 
which  the  effect  has  been  entirely,  or  almost  entirely 
mental,  should  be  remembered  by  offspring  with  any 
definiteness.  The  intellect  of  the  offspring  might  be 
affected,  for  better  or  worse,  by  the  general  nature  of 
the  intellectual  employment  of  the  parent ;  or  a  great 
shock  to  a  parent  might  destroy  or  weaken  the  intellect 
of  the  offspring;  but  unless  a  deep  impression  were 
made  upon  the  cells  of  the  body,  and  deepened  by  sub- 
sequent disease,  we  could  not  expect  it  to  be  remem- 


196  LIFE  AND  HABIT. 

bered  with  any  definiteness,  or  precision.  We  may 
talk  as  we  will  about  mental  pain,  and  mental  scars, 
but  after  all,  the  impressions  they  leave  are  incompar- 
ably less  durable  than  those  made  by  an  organic  lesion. 
It  is  probable,  therefore,  that  the  feeling  which  so  many 
have  described,  as  though  they  remembered  this  or  that 
in  some  past  existence,  is  purely  imaginary,  and  due 
rather  to  unconscious  recognition  of  the  fact  that  we 
certainly  have  lived  before,  than  to  any  actual  occur- 
rence corresponding  to  the  supposed  recollection. 

And  lastly,  we  should  look  to  find  in  the  action  of 
memory,  as  between  one  generation  and  another,  a  re- 
flection of  the  many  anomalies  and  exceptions  to  ordi- 
nary rules  which  we  observe  in  memory,  so  far  as  we 
can  watch  its  action  in  what  we  call  our  own  single 
lives,  and  the  single  lives  of  others.  We  should  expect 
that  reversion  should  be  frequently  capricious — that  is 
to  say,  give  us  more  trouble  to  account  for  than  we  are 
either  able  or  willing  to  take.  And  assuredly  we  find 
it  so  in  fact.  Mr.  Darwin — from  whom  it  is  impossible 
to  quote  too  much  or  too  fully,  inasmuch  as  no  one 
else  can  furnish  such  a  store  of  facts,  so  well  arranged, 
and  so  above  all  suspicion  of  either  carelessness  or  want 
of  candour — so  that,  however  we  may  differ  from  him, 
it  is  he  himself  who  shows  us  how  to  do  so,  and  whose 
pupils  we  all  are — Mr.  Darwin  writes :  "  In  every 
living  being  we  may  rest  assured  that  a  host  of  long- 
lost  characters  lie  ready  to  be  evolved  under  proper 
conditions"  (does  not  one  almost  long  to  substitute  the 
word  "  memories"  for  the  word  "  characters  ?")  "  How 
can  we  make  intelligible,  and  connect  with  other  facts, 


WHAT  WE  MIGHT  EXPECT.  197 

this  wonderful  and  common  capacity  of  reversion — this 
power  of  calling  back  to  life  long-lost  characters?" 
("Plants  and  Animals,"  &c.,  vol.  ii.  p.  369,  ed.  1875). 
Surely  the  answer  may  be  hazarded,  that  we  shall  be 
able  to  do  so  when  we  can  make  intelligible  the  power 
of  calling  back  to  life  long-lost  memories.  But  I  grant 
that  this  answer  holds  out  no  immediate  prospect  of 
a  clear  understanding. 

One  word  more.  Abundant  facts  are  to  be  found 
which  point  inevitably,  as  will  appear  more  plainly  in 
the  following  chapter,  in  the  direction  of  thinking  that 
offspring  inherits  the  memories  of  its  parents;  but  I 
know  of  no  single  fact  which  suggests  that  parents  are 
in  the  smallest  degree  affected  (other  than  sympatheti- 
cally) by  the  memories  of  their  offspring  after  that 
offspring  has  been  lorn.  Whether  the  unborn  offspring 
affects  the  memory  of  the  mother  in  some  particulars, 
and  whether  we  have  here  the  explanation  of  occasional 
reversion  to  a  previous  impregnation,  is  a  matter  on 
which  I  should  hardly  like  to  express  an  opinion  now. 
Nor,  again,  can  I  find  a  single  fact  which  seems  to  indi- 
cate any  memory  of  the  parental  life  on  the  part  of 
offspring  later  than  the  average  date  of  the  offspring's 
quitting  the  body  of  the  parent. 


198 


CHAPTEE  XI. 

INSTINCT  AS  INHERITED   MEMORY. 

I  HAVE  already  alluded  to  M.  Eibot's  work  on  "  Here- 
dity," from  which  I  will  now  take  the  following  pas- 
sages. 

M.  Eibot  writes : — 

"Instinct  is  innate,  i.e.,  anterior  to  all  individual 
experience"  This  I  deny  on  grounds  already  abund- 
antly apparent ;  but  let  it  pass.  "  Whereas  intelligence 
is  developed  slowly  by  accumulated  experience,  instinct 
is  perfect  from  the  first"  ("  Heredity,"  p.  14). 

Obviously  the  memory  of  a  habit  or  experience  will 
not  commonly  be  transmitted  to  offspring  in  that  per- 
fection which  is  called  "  instinct,"  till  the  habit  or  ex- 
perience has  been  repeated  in  several  generations  with 
more  or  less  uniformity ;  for  otherwise  the  impression 
made  will  not  be  strong  enough  to  endure  through  the 
busy  and  difficult  task  of  reproduction.  This  of  course 
involves  that  the  habit  shall  have  attained,  as  it  were, 
equilibrium  with  the  creature's  sense  of  its  own  needs, 
so  that  it  shall  have  long  seemed  the  best  course  pos- 
sible, leaving  upon  the  whole  and  under  ordinary  cir- 
cumstances little  further  to  be  desired,  and  hence  that 
it  should  have  been  little  varied  during  many  genera- 


INSTINCT  AS  INHERITED  MEMORY.        199 

tions.  We  should  expect  that  it  would  be  transmitted 
in  a  more  or  less  partial,  varying,  imperfect,  and  intelli- 
gent condition  before  equilibrium  had  been  attained ;  it 
would,  however,  continually  tend  towards  equilibrium, 
for  reasons  which  will  appear  more  fully  later  on. 
When  this  stage  has  been  reached,  as  regards  any  habit, 
the  creature  will  cease  trying  to  improve ;  on  which  the 
repetition  of  the  habit  will  become  stable,  and  hence 
become  capable  of  more  unerring  transmission — but  at 
the  same  time  improvement  will  cease ;  the  habit  will 
become  fixed,  and  be  perhaps  transmitted  at  an  earlier 
and  earlier  age,  till  it  has  reached  that  date  of  mani- 
festation which  shall  be  found  most  agreeable  to  the 
other  habits  of  the  creature.  It  will  also  be  manifested, 
as  a  matter  of  course,  without  further  consciousness  or 
reflection,  for  people  cannot  be  always  opening  up  settled 
questions ;  if  they  thought  a  matter  over  yesterday  they 
cannot  think  it  all  over  again  to-day,  but  will  adopt  for 
better  or  worse  the  conclusion  then  reached;  and  this,  too, 
even  in  spite  sometimes  of  considerable  misgiving,  that 
if  they  were  to  think  still  further  they  could  find  a  still 
better  course.  It  is  not,  therefore,  to  be  expected  that 
"instinct"  should  show  signs  of  that  hesitating  and 
tentative  action  which  results  from  knowledge  that  is 
still  so  imperfect  as  to  be  actively  self-conscious ;  nor 
yet  that  it  should  grow  or  vary,  unless  under  such 
changed  conditions  as  shall  baffle  memory,  and  present 
the  alternative  of  either  invention — that  is  to  say, 
variation — or  death.  But  every  instinct  must  have 
passed  through  the  laboriously  intelligent  stages  through 
which  human  civilisations  and  mechanical  inventions  are 
o 


200  LIFE  AND  HABIT. 

now  passing ;  and  he  who  would  study  the  origin  of 
an  instinct  with  its  development,  partial  transmission, 
further  growth,  further  transmission,  approach  to  more 
unreflecting  stability,  and  finally,  its  perfection  as  an  un- 
erring and  unerringly  transmitted  instinct,  must  look  to 
laws,  customs,  and  machinery  as  his  best  instructors. 
Customs  and  machines  are  instincts  and  organs  now  in 
process  of  development;  they  will  assuredly  one  day 
reach  the  unconscious  state  of  equilibrium  which  we 
observe  in  the  structures  and  instincts  of  bees  and  ants, 
and  an  approach  to  which  may  be  found  among  some 
savage  nations.  We  may  reflect,  however,  not  without 
pleasure,  that  this  condition — the  true  millennium — is 
still  distant.  Nevertheless  the  ants  and  bees  seem 
happy  ;  perhaps  more  happy  than  when  so  many  social 
questions  were  in  as  hot  discussion  among  them,  as 
other,  and  not  dissimilar  ones,  will  one  day  be  amongst 
ourselves. 

And  this,  as  will  be  apparent,  opens  up  the  whole 
question  of  the  stability  of  species,  which  we  cannot 
follow  further  here,  than  to  say,  that  according  to  the 
balance  of  testimony,  many  plants  and  animals  do 
appear  to  have  reached  a  phase  of  being  from  which 
they  are  hard  to  move — that  is  to  say,  they  will  die 
sooner  than  be  at  the  pains  of  altering  their  habits — 
true  martyrs  to  their  convictions.  Such  races  refuse  to 
see  changes  in  their  surroundings  as  long  as  they  can, 
but  when  compelled  to  recognise  them,  they  throw  up 
the  game  because  they  cannot  and  will  not,  or  will 
not  and  cannot,  invent.  And  this  is  perfectly  intelli- 
gible, for  a  race  is  nothing  but  a  long-lived  individual, 


INSTINCT  AS  INHERITED  MEMORY.        201 

and  like  any  individual,  or  tribe  of  men  whom  we  have 
yet  observed,  will  have  its  special  capacities  and  its 
special  limitations,  though,  as  in  the  case  of  the  indi- 
vidual, so  also  with  the  race,  it  is  exceedingly  hard  to 
say  what  those  limitations  are,  and  why,  having  been 
able  to  go  so  far,  it  should  go  no  further.  Every  man 
and  every  race  is  capable  of  education  up  to  a  certain 
point,  but  not  to  the  extent  of  being  made  from  a  sow's 
ear  into  a  silk  purse.  The  proximate  cause  of  the 
limitation  seems  to  lie  in  the  absence  of  the  wish  to 
go  further;  the  presence  or  absence  of  the  wish  will 
depend  upon  the  nature  and  surroundings  of  the  indi- 
vidual, which  is  simply  a  way  of  saying  that  one  can 
get  no  further,  but  that  as  the  song  (with  a  slight 
alteration)  says : — 

"  Some  breeds  do,  and  some  breeds  don't, 
Some  breeds  will,  but  this  breed  won't, 
I  tried  very  often  to  see  if  it  would, 
But  it  said  it  really  could'nt,  and  I  don't  think  it  could." 

It  may  perhaps  be  maintained,  that  with  time  and 
patience,  one  might  train  a  rather  stupid  plough-boy 
to  understand  the  differential  calculus.  This  might 
be  done  with  the  help  of  an  inward  desire  on  the  part 
of  the  boy  to  learn,  but  never  otherwise.  If  the  boy 
wants  to  learn  or  to  improve  generally,  he  will  do  so  in 
spite  of  every  hindrance,  till  in  time  he  becomes  a  very 
different  being  from  what  he  was  originally.  If  he 
does  not  want  to  learn,  he  will  not  do  so  for  any  wish 
of  another  person.  If  he  feels  that  he  has  the  power 
he  will  wish ;  or  if  he  wishes,  he  will  begin  to  think 


202  LIFE  AND  HABIT. 

he  has  the  power,  and  try  to  fulfil  his  wishes;  one 
cannot  say  which  comes  first,  for  the  power  and  the 
desire  go  always  hand  in  hand,  or  nearly  so,  and  the 
whole  business  is  nothing  but  a  most  vicious  circle  from 
first  to  last.  But  it  is  plain  that  there  is  more  to  be 
said  on  behalf  of  such  circles  than  we  have  been  in  the 
habit  of  thinking.  Do  what  we  will,  we  must  each  one 
of  us  argue  in  a  circle  of  our  own,  from  which,  so  long 
as  we  live  at  all,  we  can  by  no  possibility  escape.  I 
am  not  sure  whether  the  frank  acceptation  and  recog- 
nition of  this  fact  is  not  the  best  corrective  for  dogma- 
tism that  we  are  likely  to  find. 

We  can  understand  that  a  pigeon  might  in  the  course 
of  ages  grow  to  be  a  peacock  if  there  was  a  persistent 
desire  on  the  part  of  the  pigeon  through  all  these  ages 
to  do  so.  We  know  very  well  that  this  has  not  probably 
occurred  in  nature,  inasmuch  as  no  pigeon  is  at  all  likely 
to  wish  to  be  very  different  from  what  it  is  now.  The 
idea  of  being  anything  very  different  from  what  it  now 
is,  would  be  too  wide  a  cross  with  the  pigeon's  other 
ideas  for  it  to  entertain  it  seriously.  If  the  pigeon  had 
never  seen  a  peacock,  it  would  not  be  able  to  conceive  the 
idea,  so  as  to  be  able  to  make  towards  it ;  if,  on  the 
other  hand,  it  had  seen  one,  it  would  not  probably  either 
want  to  become  one,  or  think  that  it  would  be  any  use 
wanting  seriously,  even  though  it  were  to  feel  a  passing 
fancy  to  be  so  gorgeously  arrayed ;  it  would  therefore 
lack  that  faith  without  which  no  action,  and  with  which, 
every  action,  is  possible. 

That  creatures  have  conceived  the  idea  of  making 
themselves  like  other  creatures  or  objects  which  it  was 


INSTINCT  AS  INHERITED  MEMORY.       203 

to  their  advantage  or  pleasure  to  resemble,  will  be  be- 
lieved by  any  one  who  turns  to  Mr.  Mivart's  "  Genesis 
of  Species,"  where  he  will  find  (chapter  ii.)  an  account  of 
some  very  showy  South  American  butterflies,  which  give 
out  such  a  strong  odour  that  nothing  will  eat  them, 
and  which  are  hence  mimicked  both  in  appearance  and 
flight  by  a  very  different  kind  of  butterfly ;  and,  again, 
we  see  that  certain  birds,  without  any  particular  desire 
of  gain,  no  sooner  hear  any  sound  than  they  begin  to 
mimick  it,  merely  for  the  pleasure  of  mimicking ;  so  we 
all  enjoy  to  mimick,  or  to  hear  good  mimicry,  so  also 
monkeys  imitate  the  actions  which  they  observe,  from 
pure  force  of  sympathy.  To  mimick,  or  to  wish  to 
mimick,  is  doubtless  often  one  of  the  first  steps  towards 
varying  in  any  given  direction.  Not  less,  in  all  pro- 
bability, than  a  full  twenty  per  cent,  of  all  the  courage 
and  good  nature  now  existing  in  the  world,  derives 
its  origin,  at  no  very  distant  date,  from  a  desire  to 
appear  courageous  and  good-natured.  And  this  suggests 
a  work  whose  title  should  be  "On  the  Fine  Arts  as 
bearing  on  the  Reproductive  System,"  of  which  the 
title  must  suffice  here. 

Against  faith,  then,  and  desire,  all  the  "natural 
selection"  in  the  world  will  not  stop  an  amoeba  from 
becoming  an  elephant,  if  a  reasonable  time  be  granted ; 
without  the  faith  and  the  desire,  neither  "natural 
selection"  nor  artificial  breeding  will  be  able  to  do 
much  in  the  way  of  modifying  any  structure.  When 
we  have  once  thoroughly  grasped  the  conception  that 
we  are  all  one  creature,  and  that  each  one  of  us  is  many 
millions  of  years  old,  so  that  all  the  pigeons  in  the  one 


204  LIFE  AND  HABIT. 

line  of  an  infinite  number  of  generations  are  still  one 
pigeon  only — then  we  can  understand  that  a  bird,  as 
different  from  a  peacock  as  a  pigeon  is  now,  could  yet 
have  wandered  on  and  on,  first  this  way  and  then  that, 
doing  what  it  liked,  and  thought  that  it  could  do,  till  it 
found  itself  at  length  a  peacock ;  but  we  cannot  believe 
either  that  a  bird  like  a  pigeon  should  be  able  to  appre- 
hend any  ideal  so  different  from  itself  as  a  peacock, 
and  make  towards  it,  or  that  man,  having  wished  to 
breed  a  bird  anything  like  a  peacock  from  a  bird  any- 
thing like  a  pigeon,  would  be  able  to  succeed  in  ac- 
cumulating accidental  peacock-like  variations  till  he 
had  made  the  bird  he  was  in  search  of,  no  matter  in 
what  number  of  generations ;  much  less  can  we  believe 
that  the  accumulation  of  small  fortuitous  variations  by 
"  natural  selection"  could  succeed  better.  We  can  no 
more  believe  the  above,  than  we  can  believe  that  a 
wish  outside  a  plough-boy  could  turn  him  into  a  senior 
wrangler.  The  boy  would  prove  to  be  too  many  for  his 
teacher,  and  so  would  the  pigeon  for  its  breeder. 

I  do  not  forget  that  artificial  breeding  has  modified 
the  original  type  of  the  horse  and  the  dog,  till  it  has  at 
length  produced  the  dray-horse  and  the  greyhound ;  but 
in  each  case  man  has  had  to  get  use  and  disuse — that 
is  to  say,  the  desires  of  the  animal  itself — to  help  him. 

We  are  led,  then,  to  the  conclusion  that  all  races 
have  what  for  practical  purposes  may  be  considered  as 
their  limits,  though  there  is  no  saying  what  those 
limits  are,  nor  indeed  why,  in  theory,  there  should  be 
any  limits  at  all,  but  only  that  there  are  limits  in 
practice.  Eaces  which  vary  considerably  must  be  con- 


INSTINCT  AS  INHERITED  MEMORY.       205 

sidered  as  clever,  but  it  may  be  speculative,  people  who 
commonly  have  a  genius  in  some  special  direction,  as 
perhaps  for  mimicry,  perhaps  for  beauty,  perhaps  for 
music,  perhaps  for  the  higher  mathematics,  but  seldom 
in  more  than  one  or  two  directions ;  while  "  inflexible 
organisations,"  like  that  of  the  goose,  may  be  considered 
as  belonging  to  people  with  one  idea,  and  the  greater 
tendency  of  plants  and  animals  to  vary  under  domes- 
tication may  be  reasonably  compared  with  the  effects 
of  culture  and  education:  that  is  to  say,  may  be 
referred  to  increased  range  and  variety  of  experience 
or  perceptions,  which  will  either  cause  sterility,  if  they 
be  too  unfamiliar,  so  as  to  be  incapable  of  fusion  with 
preceding  ideas,  and  hence  to  bring  memory  to  a  sudden 
fault,  or  will  open  the  door  for  all  manner  of  further 
variation — the  new  ideas  having  suggested  new  trains 
of  thought,  which  a  clever  example  of  a  clever  race 
will  be  only  too  eager  to  pursue. 

Let  us  now  return  to  M.  Pdbot.  He  writes  (p.  14) : — 
"  The  duckling  hatched  by  the  hen  makes  straight  for 
water."  In  what  conceivable  way  can  we  account  for 
this,  except  on  the  supposition  that  the  duckling  knowrs 
perfectly  well  what  it  can,  and  what  it  cannot  do  with 
water,  owing  to  its  recollection  of  what  it  did  when  it 
was  still  one  individuality  with  its  parents,  and  hence, 
when  it  was  a  duckling  before  ? 

"The  squirrel,  before  it  knows  anything  of  winter, 
lays  up  a  store  of  nuts.  A  bird  when  hatched  in  a  cage 
will,  when  given  its  freedom,  build  for  itself  a  nest  like 
that  of  its  parents,  out  of  the  same  materials,  and  of 
the  same  shape." 


206  LIFE  AND  HABIT. 

If  this  is  not  due  to  memory,  even  an  imperfect 
explanation  of  what  else  it  can  be  due  to,  "would  be 
satisfactory." 

"  Intelligence  gropes  about,  tries  this  way  and  that, 
misses  its  object,  commits  mistakes,  and  corrects  them." 

Yes.  Because  intelligence  is  of  consciousness,  and 
consciousness  is  of  attention,  and  attention  is  of  uncer- 
tainty, and  uncertainty  is  of  ignorance  or  want  of  con- 
sciousness. Intelligence  is  not  yet  thoroughly  up  to  its 
business. 

"  Instinct  advances  with  a  mechanical  certainty." 

Why  mechanical  ?  Should  not  "  with  apparent  cer- 
tainty "  suffice  ? 

"  Hence  comes  its  unconscious  character." 

But  for  the  word  "  mechanical "  this  is  true,  and  is 
what  we  have  been  all  along  insisting  on. 

"  It  knows  nothing  either  of  ends,  or  of  the  means  of 
attaining  them ;  it  implies  no  comparison,  judgment,  or 
choice." 

This  is  assumption.  What  is  certain  is  that  instinct 
does  not  betray  signs  of  self-consciousness  as  to  its  own 
knowledge.  It  has  dismissed  reference  to  first  prin- 
ciples, and  is  no  longer  under  the  law,  but  under  the 
grace  of  a  settled  conviction. 

"  All  seems  directed  by  thought." 

Yes ;  because  all  has  been  in  earlier  existences  directed 
by  thought. 

"  Without  ever  arriving  at  thought." 

Because  it  has  got  past  thought,  and  though  "  directed 
by  thought"  originally,  is  now  travelling  in  exactly  the 
opposite  direction.  It  is  not  likely  to  reach  thought 


INSTINCT  AS  INHERITED  MEMORY.        207 

again,  till  people  get  to  know  worse  and  worse  how  to 
do  things,  the  oftener  they  practise  them. 

"  And  if  this  phenomenon  appear  strange,  it  must  be 
observed  that  analogous  states  occur  in  ourselves.  All 
that  we  do  from  habit— walking,  writing,  or  practising  a 
mechanical  act,  for  instance — all  these  and  many  other 
very  complex  acts  are  performed  without  consciousness. 

"  Instinct  appears  stationary.  It  does  not,  like  intel- 
ligence, seem  to  grow  and  decay,  to  gain  and  to  lose. 
It  does  not  improve." 

Naturally.  For  improvement  can  only  as  a  general 
rule  be  looked  for  along  the  line  of  latest  development, 
that  is  to  say,  in  matters  concerning  which  the  creature 
is  being  still  consciously  exercised.  Older  questions 
are  settled,  and  the  solution  must  be  accepted  as  final, 
for  the  question  of  living  at  all  would  be  reduced  to  an 
absurdity,  if  everything  decided  upon  one  day  was  to 
be  undecided  again  the  next ;  as  with  painting  or  music, 
so  with  life  and  politics,  let  every  man  be  fully  per- 
suaded in  his  own  mind,  for  decision  with  wrong  will 
be  commonly  a  better  policy  than  indecision — I  had 
almost  added  with  right ;  and  a  firm  purpose  with  risk 
will  be  better  than  an  infirm  one  with  temporary 
exemption  from  disaster.  Every  race  has  made  its 
great  blunders,  to  which  it  has  nevertheless  adhered, 
inasmuch  as  the  corresponding  modification  of  other 
structures  and  instincts  was  found  preferable  to  the 
revolution  which  would  be  caused  by  a  radical  change 
of  structure,  with  consequent  havoc  among  a  legion  of 
vested  interests.  Rudimentary  organs  are,  as  has  been 
often  said,  the  survivals  of  these  interests — the  signs  of 


208  LIFE  AND  HABIT, 

their  peaceful  and  gradual  extinction  as  living  faiths ; 
they  are  also  instances  of  the  difficulty  of  breaking 
through  any  cant  or  trick  which  we  have  long  practised, 
and  which  is  not  sufficiently  troublesome  to  make  it  a 
serious  object  with  us  to  cure  ourselves  of  the  habit 

"  If  it  does  not  remain  perfectly  invariable,  at  least  it 
only  varies  within  very  narrow  limits ;  and  though  this 
question  has  been  warmly  debated  in  our  day,  and  is 
yet  unsettled,  we  may  yet  say  that  in  instinct  immuta- 
bility is  the  law,  variation  the  exception." 

This  is  quite  as  it  should  be.  Genius  will  occasion- 
ally rise  a  little  above  convention,  but  with  an  old  con- 
vention immutability  will  be  the  rule. 

"  Such,"  continues  M.  Eibot,  "  are  the  admitted  char- 
acters of  instinct." 

Yes ;  but  are  they  not  also  the  admitted  characters 
of  actions  that  are  due  to  memory  ? 

At  the  bottom  of  p.  15,  M.  Kibot  quotes  the  following 
from  Mr.  Darwin : — 

"  We  have  reason  to  believe  that  aboriginal  habits  are 
long  retained  under  domestication.  Thus  with  the  com- 
mon ass,  we  see  signs  of  its  original  desert-life  in  its 
strong  dislike  to  cross  the  smallest  stream  of  water, 
and  in  its  pleasure  in  rolling  in  the  dust.  The  same 
strong  dislike  to  cross  a  stream  is  common  to  the  camel 
which  has  been  domesticated  from  a  very  early  period. 
Young  pigs,  though  so  tame,  sometimes  squat  when 
frightened,  and  then  try  to  conceal  themselves,  even  in 
an  open  and  bare  place.  Young  turkeys,  and  occasion- 
ally even  young  fowls,  when  the  hen  gives  the  danger- 
cry,  run  away  and  try  to  hide  themselves,  like  young 


INSTINCT  AS  INHERITED  MEMORY.       209 

partridges  or  pheasants,  in  order  that  their  mother  may 
take  flight,  of  which  she  has  lost  the  power.  The  musk 
duck  in  its  native  country  often  perches  and  roosts  on 
trees,  and  our  domesticated  musk  ducks,  though  slug- 
gish birds,  are  fond  of  perching  on  the  tops  of  barns, 
walls,  &c.  .  .  .  We  know  that  the  dog,  however  well  and 
regularly  fed,  often  buries  like  the  fox  any  superfluous 
food ;  we  see  him  turning  round  and  round  on  a  carpet 
as  if  to  trample  down  grass  to  form  a  bed.  ...  In  the 
delight  with  which  lambs  and  kids  crowd  together  and 
frisk  upon  the  smallest  hillock  we  see  a  vestige  of  their 
former  alpine  habits." 

What  does  this  delightful  passage  go  to  show,  if  not 
that  the  young  in  all  these  cases  must  still  have  a  latent 
memory  of  their  past  existences,  which  is  called  into  an 
active  condition  as  soon  as  the  associated  ideas  present 
themselves  ? 

Eeturning  to  M.  Ribot's  own  observations,  we  find  he 
tells  us  that  it  usually  requires  three  or  four  generations 
to  fix  the  results  of  training,  and  to  prevent  a  return  to 
the  instincts  of  the  wild  state.  I  think,  however,  it 
would  not  be  presumptuous  to  suppose  that  if  an  animal 
after  only  three  or  four  generations  of  training  be  re- 
stored to  its  original  conditions  of  life,  it  will  forget  its 
intermediate  training  and  return  to  its  old  ways,  almost 
as  readily  as  a  London  street  Arab  would  forget  the 
beneficial  effects  of  a  week's  training  in  a  reformatory 
school,  if  he  were  then  turned  loose  again  on  the  streets. 
So  if  we  hatch  wild  ducks'  eggs  under  a  tame  duck,  the 
ducklings  "  will  have  scarce  left  the  egg-shell  when 
they  obey  the  instincts  of  their  race  and  take  their 


210  LIFE  AND  HABIT. 

flight."  So  the  colts  from  wild  horses,  and  mongrel 
young  between  wild  and  domesticated  horses,  betray 
traces  of  their  earlier  memories. 

On  this  M.  Eibot  says :  "  Originally  man  had  con- 
siderable trouble  in  taming  the  animals  which  are  now 
domesticated ;  and  his  work  would  have  been  in  vain 
had  not  heredity  "  (memory)  "  come  to  his  aid.  It  may 
be  said  that  after  man  has  modified  a  wild  animal  to  his 
will,  there  goes  on  in  its  progeny  a  silent  conflict  be- 
tween two  heredities  "  (memories),  "  the  one  tending  to 
fix  the  acquired  modifications  and  the  other  to  preserve 
the  primitive  instincts.  The  latter  often  get  the  mas- 
tery, and  only  after  several  generations  is  training  sure 
of  victory.  But  we  may  see  that  in  either  case  here- 
dity "  (memory)  "  always  asserts  its  rights." 

How  marvellously  is  the  above  passage  elucidated 
and  made  to  fit  in  with  the  results  of  our  recognised 
experience,  by  the  simple  substitution  of  the  word 
"  memory  "  for  "  heredity." 

"  Among  the  higher  animals " — to  continue  quoting 
— "  which  are  possessed  not  only  of  instinct,  but  also  of 
intelligence,  nothing  is  more  common  than  to  see  mental 
dispositions,  which  have  evidently  been  acquired,  so 
fixed  by  heredity,  that  they  are  confounded  with  instinct, 
so  spontaneous  and  automatic  do  they  become.  Young 
pointers  have  been  known  to  point  the  first  time  they 
were  taken  out,  sometimes  even  better  than  dogs  that 
had  been  for  a  long  time  in  training.  The  habit  of 
saving  life  is  hereditary  in  breeds  that  have  been 
brought  up  to  it,  as  is  also  the  shepherd  dog's  habit  of 
moving  around  the  flock  and  guarding  it." 


INSTINCT  AS  INHERITED  MEMORY.       211 

As  soon  as  we  have  grasped  the  notion,  that  instinct 
is  only  the  epitome  of  past  experience,  revised,  cor- 
rected, made  perfect,  and  learnt  by  rote,  we  no  longer 
find  any  desire  to  separate  "instinct"  from  "mental 
dispositions,  which  have  evidently  been  acquired  and 
fixed  by  heredity,"  for  the  simple  reason  that  they  are 
one  and  the  same  thing. 

A  few  more  examples  are  all  that  my  limits  will 
allow — they  abound  on  every  side,  and  the  difficulty 
lies  only  in  selecting — M.  Eibot  being  to  hand,  I  will 
venture  to  lay  him  under  still  further  contributions. 

On  page  19  we  find : — 

"Knight  has  shown  experimentally  the  truth  of 
the  proverb,  '  a  good  hound  is  bred  so,'  he  took  every 
care  that  when  the  pups  were  first  taken  into  the  field, 
they  should  receive  no  guidance  from  older  dogs ;  yet 
the  very  first  day,  one  of  the  pups  stood  trembling  with 
anxiety,  having  his  eyes  fixed  and  all  his  muscles 
strained  at  the  partridges  which  their  parents  had  been 
trained  to  point.  A  spaniel  belonging  to  a  breed  which 
had  been  trained  to  woodcock-shooting,  knew  perfectly 
well  from  the  first  how  to  act  like  an  old  dog,  avoiding 
places  where  the  ground  was  frozen,  and  where  it  was, 
therefore,  useless  to  seek  the  game,  as  there  was  no 
scent.  Finally,  a  young  polecat  terrier  was  thrown  into 
a  state  of  great  excitement  the  first  time  he  ever  saw 
one  of  these  animals,  while  a  spaniel  remained  perfectly 
calm. 

"  In  South  America,  according  to  Eoulin,  dogs  belong- 
ing to  a  breed  that  has  long  been  trained  to  the  danger- 
ous chase  of  the  peccary,  when  taken  for  the  first  time 


212  LIFE  AXD  HABIT. 

into  the  woods,  know  the  tactics  to  adopt  quite  as  well 
as  the  old  dogs,  and  that  without  any  instruction.  Dogs 
of  other  races,  and  unacquainted  with  the  tactics,  are 
killed  at  once,  no  matter  how  strong  they  may  be. 
The  American  greyhound,  instead  of  leaping  at  the 
stag,  attacks  him  by  the  belly,  and  throws  him  over,  as 
his  ancestors  had  been  trained  to  do  in  hunting  the 
Indians. 

"  Thus,  then,  heredity  transmits  modification  no  less 
than  natural  instincts." 

Should  not  this  rather  be — "  thus,  then,  we  see  that 
not  only  older  and  remoter  habits,  but  habits  which 
have  been  practised  for  a  comparatively  small  number 
of  generations,  may  be  so  deeply  impressed  on  the  indi- 
vidual that  they  may  dwell  in  his  memory,  surviving 
the  so-called  change  of  personality  which  he  undergoes 
in  each  successive  generation"? 

"There  is,  however,  an  important  difference  to  be 
noted :  the  heredity  of  instincts  admits  of  no  exceptions, 
while  in  that  of  modifications  there  are  many." 

It  may  be  well  doubted  how  far  the  heredity  of  in- 
stincts admits  of  no  exceptions ;  on  the  contrary,  it 
would  seem  probable  that  in  many  races  geniuses  have 
from  time  to  time  arisen  who  remembered  not  only  their 
past  experiences,  as  far  as  action  and  habit  went,  but 
have  been  able  to  rise  in  some  degree  above  habit  where 
they  felt  that  improvement  was  possible,  and  who  car- 
ried such  improvement  into  further  practice,  by  slightly 
modifying  their  structure  in  the  desired  direction  on  the 
next  occasion  that  they  had  a  chance  of  dealing  with 
protoplasm  at  all.  It  is  by  these  rare  instances  of  in- 


INSTINCT  AS  INHERITED  MEMORY.       213 

tellectual  genius  (and  I  would  add  of  moral  genius,  if 
many  of  the  instincts  and  structures  of  plants  and  ani- 
mals did  not  show  that  they  had  got  into  a  region  as  far 
above  morals— other  than  enlightened  self-interest — as 
they  are  above  articulate  consciousness  of  their  own 
aims  in  many  other  respects) — it  is  by  these  instances 
of  either  rare  good  luck  or  rare  genius  that  many  species 
have  been,  in  all  probability,  originated  or  modified. 
Nevertheless  inappreciable  modification  of  instinct  is, 
and  ought  to  be,  the  rule. 

As  to  M.  Eibot's  assertion,  that  to  the  heredity  of  modi- 
fications there  are  many  exceptions,  I  readily  agree  with 
it,  and  can  only  say  that  it  is  exactly  what  I  should 
expect ;  the  lesson  long  since  learnt  by  rote,  and  re- 
peated in  an  infinite  number  of  generations,  would  be 
repeated  unintelligently,  and  with  little  or  no  difference, 
save  from  a  rare  accidental  slip,  the  effect  of  which 
would  be  the  culling  out  of  the  bungler  who  was  guilty 
of  it,  or  from  the  still  rarer  appearance  of  an  individual 
of  real  genius ;  while  the  newer  lesson  would  be  repeated 
both  with  more  hesitation  and  uncertainty,  and  with 
more  intelligence;  and  this  is  well  conveyed  in  M. 
Ribot's  next  sentence,  for  he  says — "It  is  only  when 
variations  have  been  firmly  rooted;  when  having  be- 
come organic,  they  constitute  a  second  nature,  which 
supplants  the  first;  when,  like  instinct,  they  have  as- 
sumed a  mechanical  character,  that  they  can  be  trans- 
nutted." 

How  nearly  M.  Pabot  comes  to  the  opinion  which  I 
myself  venture  to  propound  will  appear  from  the 
following  further  quotation.  After  dealing  with  som- 


214  LIFE  AND  HABIT. 

nambulism,  and  saying,  that  if  somnambulism  were  per- 
manent and  innate,  it  would  be  impossible  to  distin- 
guish it  from  instinct,  he  continues  : — 

"  Hence  it  is  less  difficult  than  is  generally  supposed, 
to  conceive  how  intelligence  may  become  instinct ;  we 
might  even  say  that,  leaving  out  of  consideration  the 
character  of  innateness,  to  which  we  will  return,  we 
have  seen  the  metamorphosis  take  place.  There  can 
tlien  be  no  ground  for  making  instinct  a  faculty  apart, 
sui  generis,  a  phenomenon  so  mysterious,  so  strange, 
that  usually  no  other  explanation  of  it  is  offered  but 
that  of  attributing  it  to  the  direct  act  of  the  Deity. 
This  whole  mistake  is  the  result  of  a  defective  psycho- 
logy which  makes  no  account  of  the  unconscious  activity 
of  the  soul." 

We  are  tempted  to  add — "  and  which  also  makes 
no  account  of  the  bond  fide  character  of  the  continued 
personality  of  successive  generations." 

"  But  we  are  so  accustomed,"  he  continues,  "  to  con- 
trast the  characters  of  instinct  with  those  of  intelli- 
gence— to  say  that  instinct  is  innate,  invariable,  auto- 
matic, while  intelligence  is  something  acquired,  variable, 
spontaneous — that  it  looks  at  first  paradoxical  to  assert 
that  instinct  and  intelligence  are  identical. 

"  It  is  said  that  instinct  is  innate.  But  if,  on  the 
one  hand,  we  bear  in  mind  that  many  instincts  are 
acquired,  and  that,  according  to  a  theory  hereafter  to 
be  explained  "  (which  theory,  I  frankly  confess,  I  never 
was  able  to  get  hold  of),  "all  instincts  are  only  here- 
ditary habits "  (italics  mine) ;  "  if,  on  the  other  hand, 
we  observe  that  intelligence  is  in  some  sense  held  to  be 


INST/NCT  AS  INHERITED  MEMORY.       215 

innate  by  all  modern  schools  of  philosophy,  which  agree 
to  reject  the  theory  of  the  tabula,  rasa"  (if  there  is  no 
tabula  rasa,  there  is  continued  psychological  personality, 
or  words  have  lost  their  meaning),  "  and  to  accept  either 
latent  ideas,  or  ct>  priori  forms  of  thought "  (surely  only  a 
periphrasis  for  continued  personality  and  memory)  "  or 
pre- ordination  of  the  nervous  system  and  of  the  organ- 
ism ;  it  will  "be  seen  that  this  character  of  innateness  does 
not  constitute  an  absolute  distinction  between  instinct  and 
intelligence. 

"  It  is  true  that  intelligence  is  variable,  but  so  also  is 
instinct,  as  we  have  seen.  In  winter,  the  Ehine  beaver 
plasters  his  wall  to  windward ;  once  he  was  a  builder, 
now  a  burrower ;  once  he  lived  in  society,  now  he  is 
solitary.  Intelligence  itself  can  scarcely  be  more  vari- 
able. .  .  .  Instinct  may  be  modified,  lost,  reawakened. 

"  Although  intelligence  is,  as  a  rule,  conscious,  it  may 
also  become  unconscious  and  automatic,  without  losing 
its  identity.  Neither  is  instinct  always  so  blind,  so 
mechanical,  as  is  supposed,  for  at  times  it  is  at  fault. 
The  wasp  that  has  faultily  trimmed  a  leaf  of  its  paper 
begins  again.  The  bee  only  gives  the  hexagonal  form 
to  its  cell  after  many  attempts  and  alterations.  It  is 
difficult  to  believe  that  the  loftier  instincts"  (and 
surely,  then,  the  more  recent  instincts)  "  of  the  higher 
animals  are  not  accompanied  by  at  least  a  confused  con- 
sciousness. There  is,  therefore,  no  absolute  distinction 
between  instinct  and  intelligence ;  there  is  not  a  single 
characteristic  which,  seriously  considered,  remains  the 
exclusive  property  of  either.  The  contrast  established 
between  instinctive  acts  and  intellectual  acts  is,  never- 


2i6  LIFE  AND  HABIT. 

theless,  perfectly  true,  but  only  when  we  compare  the 
extremes.  As  instinct  rises  it  approaches  intelligence — 
as  intelligence  descends  it  approaches  instinct" 

M.  Eibot  and  myself  (if  I  may  venture  to  say  so) 
are  continually  on  the  verge  of  coming  to  an  under- 
standing, when,  at  the  very  moment  that  we  seem  most 
likely  to  do  so,  we  fly,  as  it  were,  to  opposite  poles. 
Surely  the  passage  last  quoted  should  be,  "  As  instinct 
falls,"  i.e.,  becomes  less  and  less  certain  of  its  ground, 
"it  approaches  intelligence;  as  intelligence  rises,"  i.e., 
becomes  more  and  more  convinced  of  the  truth  and 
expediency  of  its  convictions — "  it  approaches  instinct." 

Enough  has  been  said  to  show  that  the  opinions 
which  I  am  advancing  are  not  new,  but  I  have  looked 
in  vain  for  the  conclusions  which,  it  appears  to  me,  M. 
Eibot  should  draw  from  his  facts;  throughout  his  in- 
teresting book  I  find  the  facts  which  it  would  seem 
should  have  guided  him  to  the  conclusions,  and  some- 
times almost  the  conclusions  themselves,  but  he  never 
seems  quite  to  have  reached  them,  nor  has  he  arranged 
his  facts  so  that  others  are  likely  to  deduce  them, 
unless  they  had  already  arrived  at  them  by  another 
road.  I  cannot,  however,  sufficiently  express  my  obli- 
gations to  M.  Ribot. 

I  cannot  refrain  from  bringing  forward  a  few  more 
instances  of  what  I  think  must  be  considered  by  every 
reader  as  hereditary  memory.  Sydney  Smith  writes : — 

"  Sir  James  Hall  hatched  some  chickens  in  an  oven. 
Within  a  few  minutes  after  the  shell  was  broken,  a 
spider  was  turned  loose  before  this  very  youthful 
brood;  the  destroyer  of  flies  had  hardly  proceeded 


INSTINCT  AS  INHERITED  MEMORY.      217 

more  than  a  few  inches,  before  he  was  descried  by  one 
of  these  oven-born  chickens,  and,  at  one  peck  of  his 
bill,  immediately  devoured.  This  certainly  was  not 
imitation.  A  female  goat  very  near  delivery  died; 
Galen  cut  out  the  young  kid,  and  placed  before  it  a 
bundle  of  hay,  a  bunch  of  fruit,  and  a  pan  of  milk ;  the 
young  kid  smelt  to  them  all  very  attentively,  and  then 
began  to  lap  the  milk.  This  was  not  imitation.  And 
what  is  commonly  and  rightly  called  instinct,  cannot 
be  explained  away,  under  the  notion  of  its  being  imita- 
tion "  (Lecture  xvii.  on  Moral  Philosophy). 

It  cannot,  indeed,  be  explained  away  under  the  notion 
of  its  being  imitation,  but  I  think  it  may  well  be  so 
under  that  of  its  being  memory. 

Again,  a  little  further  on  in  the  same  lecture,  as  that 
above  quoted  from,  we  find : — 

"Ants  and  beavers  lay  up  magazines.  Where  do 
they  get  their  knowledge  that  it  will  not  be  so  easy  to 
collect  food  in  rainy  weather,  as  it  is  in  summer  ?  Men 
and  women  know  these  things,  because  their  grand- 
papas and  grandmammas  have  told  them  so.  Ants 
hatched  from  the  egg  artificially,  or  birds  hatched  in 
this  manner,  have  all  this  knowledge  by  intuition, 
without  the  smallest  communication  with  any  of  their 
relations.  Now  observe  what  the  solitary  wasp  does; 
she  digs  several  holes  in  the  sand,  in  each  of  which 
she  deposits  an  egg,  though  she  certainly  knows  not  (?) 
that  an  animal  is  deposited  in  that  egg,  and  still  less 
that  this  animal  must  be  nourished  with  other  animals. 
She  collects  a  few  green  flies,  rolls  them  up  neatly  in 
several  parcels  (like  Bologna  sausages),  and  stuffs  one 


2i8  LIFE  AND  HABIT. 

parcel  into  each  hole  where  an  egg  is  deposited.  When 
the  wasp  worm  is  hatched,  it  finds  a  store  of  provision 
ready  made;  and  what  is  most  curious,  the  quantity 
allotted  to  each  is  exactly  sufficient  to  support  it,  till 
it  attains  the  period  of  wasphood,  and  can  provide  for 
itself.  This  instinct  of  the  parent  wasp  is  the  more 
remarkable  as  it  does  not  feed  upon  flesh  itself.  Here 
the  little  creature  has  never  seen  its  parent ;  for  by  the 
time  it  is  born,  the  parent  is  always  eaten  by  sparrows ; 
and  yet,  without  the  slightest  education,  or  previous 
experience,  it  does  everything  that  the  parent  did  before 
it.  Now  the  objectors  to  the  doctrine  of  instinct  may 
say  what  they  please,  but  young  tailors  have  no  intui- 
tive method  of  making  pantaloons ;  a  new-born  mercer 
cannot  measure  diaper  ;  nature  teaches  a  cook's 
daughter  nothing  about  sippets.  All  these  things 
require  with  us  seven  years'  apprenticeship;  but  in- 
sects are  like  Moliere's  persons  of  quality — they  know 
everything  (as  Moliere  says),  without  having  learnt 
anything.  '  Les  gens  de  qualite"  savent  tout,  sans  avoir 
rien  appris.' " 

How  completely  all  difficulty  vanishes  from  the 
facts  so  pleasantly  told  in  this  passage  when  we  bear  in 
mind  the  true  nature  of  personal  identity,  the  ordinary 
working  of  memory,  and  the  vanishing  tendency  of  con- 
sciousness concerning  what  we  know  exceedingly  well. 

My  last  instance  I  take  from  M.  Ribot,  who  writes : — 
"  Gratiolet,  in  his  Anatomie  Comparte  du  Systtme  Nerveux, 
states  that  an  old  piece  of  wolf's  skin,  with  the  hair 
all  worn  away,  when  set  before  a  little  dog,  threw  the 
animal  into  convulsions  of  fear  by  the  slight  scent 


INSTINCT  AS  INHERITED  MEMORY.       219 

attaching  to  it.  The  dog  had  never  seen  a  wolf,  and 
we  can  only  explain  this  alarm  by  the  hereditary  trans- 
mission of  certain  sentiments,  coupled  with  a  certain 
perception  of  the  sense  of  smell "  ("  Heredity,"  p.  43). 

I  should  prefer  to  say  "we  can  only  explain  the  alarm 
by  supposing  that  the  smell  of  the  wolf's  skin" — the 
sense  of  smell  being,  as  we  all  know,  more  powerful  to 
recall  the  ideas  that  have  been  associated  with  it  than 
any  other  sense — "  brought  up  the  ideas  with  which  it 
had  been  associated  in  the  dog's  mind  during  many 
previous  existences" — he  on  smelling  the  wolfs  skin 
remembering  all  about  wolves  perfectly  well. 


(220) 


CHAPTER  XII. 

INSTINCTS   OF  NEUTER  INSECTS. 

IN  this  chapter  I  will  consider,  as  briefly  as  possible, 
the  strongest  argument  that  I  have  been  able  to  dis- 
cover against  the  supposition  that  instinct  is  chiefly 
due  to  habit.  I  have  said  "  the  strongest  argument ; "  I 
should  have  said,  the  only  argument  that  struck  me  as 
offering  on  the  face  of  it  serious  difficulties. 

Turning,  then,  to  Mr.  Darwin's  chapter  on  instinct 
("Natural  Selection,"  ed.  1876,  p.  205),  we  find  sub- 
stantially much  the  same  views  as  those  taken  at  a  later 
date  by  M.  Ribot,  and  referred  to  in  the  preceding 
chapter.  Mr.  Darwin  writes : — 

"  An  action,  which  we  ourselves  require  experience 
to  enable  us  to  perform,  when  performed  by  an  animal, 
more  especially  a  very  young  one,  without  experience, 
and  when  performed  by  many  animals  in  the  same 
way  without  their  knowing  for  what  purpose  it  is  per- 
formed, is  usually  said  to  be  instinctive." 

The  above  should  strictly  be,  "  without  their  being 
conscious  of  their  own  knowledge  concerning  the  pur- 
pose for  which  they  act  as  they  do  j "  and  though  some 
may  say  that  the  two  phrases  come  to  the  same  thing, 
I  think  there  is  an  important  difference,  as  what  I  pro- 


INSTINCTS  OF  NEUTER  INSECTS.          221 

pose  distinguishes  ignorance  from  over-familiarity,  both 
which  states  are  alike  unself-conscious,  though  with 
widely  different  results. 

"But  I  could  show,"  continues  Mr.  Darwin,  "that 
none  of  these  characters  are  universal.  A  little  dose 
of  judgement  or  reason,  as  Pierre  Huber  expresses  it, 
often  comes  into  play  even  with  animals  low  in  the 
scale  of  nature. 

"  Frederick  Cuvier  and  several  of  the  older  meta- 
physicians have  compared  instinct  with  habit." 

I  would  go  further  and  would  say,  that  instinct,  in 
the  great  majority  of  cases,  is  habit  pure  and  simple, 
contracted  originally  by  some  one  or  more  individuals ; 
practised,  probably,  in  a  consciously  intelligent  manner 
during  many  successive  lives,  until  the  habit  has  ac- 
quired the  highest  perfection  which  the  circumstances 
admitted;  and,  finally,  so  deeply  impressed  upon  the 
memory  as  to  survive  that  effacement  of  minor  impres- 
sions which  generally  takes  place  in  every  fresh  life- 
wave  or  generation. 

I  would  say,  that  unless  the  identity  of  offspring 
with  their  parents  be  so  far  admitted  that  the  children 
be  allowed  to  remember  the  deeper  impressions  engraved 
on  the  minds  of  those  who  begot  them,  it  is  little  less 
than  trifling  to  talk,  as  so  many  writers  do,  about  in- 
herited habit,  or  the  experience  of  the  race,  or,  indeed, 
accumulated  variations  of  instincts. 

When  an  instinct  is  not  habit,  as  resulting  from 
memory  pure  and  simple,  it  is  habit  modified  by  some 
treatment,  generally  in  the  youth  or  embryonic  stages  of 
the  individual,  which  disturbs  his  memory,  and  drives 


222  LIFE  AND  HABIT. 

him  on  to  some  unusual  course,  inasmuch  as  he  cannot 
recognise  and  remember  his  usual  one  by  reason  of  the 
change  now  made  in  it.  Habits  and  instincts,  again, 
may  be  modified  by  any  important  change  in  the  con- 
dition of  the  parents,  which  will  then  both  affect  the 
parent's  sense  of  his  own  identity,  and  also  create  more 
or  less  fault,  or  dislocation  of  memory,  in  the  offspring 
immediately  behind  the  memory  of  his  last  life. 
Change  of  food  may  at  times  be  sufficient  to  create  a 
specific  modification — that  is  to  say,  to  affect  all  the 
individuals  whose  food  is  so  changed,  in  one  and  the 
same  way — whether  as  regards  structure  or  habit.  Thus 
we  see  that  certain  changes  in  food  (and  domicile),  from 
those  with  which  its  ancestors  have  been  familiar,  will 
disturb  the  memory  of  a  queen  bee's  egg,  and  set  it  at 
such  disadvantage  as  to  make  it  make  itself  into  a 
neuter  bee ;  but  yet  we  find  that  the  larva  thus  partly 
aborted  may  have  its  memories  restored  to  it,  if  not 
already  too  much  disturbed,  and  may  thus  return  to  its 
condition  as  a  queen  bee,  if  it  only  again  be  restored  to 
the  food  and  domicile,  which  its  past  memories  can 
alone  remember. 

So  we  see  that  opium,  tobacco,  alcohol,  hasheesh,  and 
tea  produce  certain  effects  upon  our  own  structure  and 
instincts.  But  though  capable  of  modification,  and  of 
specific  modification,  which  may  in  time  become  in- 
herited, and  hence  resolve  itself  into  a  true  instinct  or 
settled  question,  yet  I  maintain  that  the  main  bulk  of 
the  instinct  (whether  as  affecting  structure  or  habits  of 
life)  will  be  derived  from  memory  pure  and  simple; 
the  individual  growing  up  in  the  shape  he  does,  and 


INSTINCTS  OF  NEUTER  INSECTS.          223 

liking  to  do  this  or  that  when  he  is  grown  up,  simply 
from  recollection  of  what  he  did  last  time,  and  of  what 
on  the  whole  suited  him. 

For  it  must  be  remembered  that  a  drug  which  should 
destroy  some  one  part  at  an  early  embryonic  stage,  and 
thus  prevent  it  from  development,  would  prevent  the 
creature  from  recognising  the  surroundings  which 
affected  that  part  when  he  was  last  alive  and  unmuti- 
lated,  as  being  the  same  as  his  present  surroundings. 
He  would  be  puzzled,  for  he  would  be  viewing  the  posi- 
tion from  a  different  standpoint.  If  any  important 
item  in  a  number  of  associated  ideas  disappears,  the 
plot  fails;  and  a  great  internal  change  is  an  exceedingly 
important  item.  Life  and  things  to  a  creature  so  treated 
at  an  early  embryonic  stage  would  not  be  life  and  things 
as  he  last  remembered  them ;  hence  he  would  not  be 
able  to  do  the  same  now  as  he  did  then ;  that  is  to  say, 
he  would  vary  both  in  structure  and  instinct;  but  if 
the  creature  were  tolerably  uniform  to  start  with,  and 
were  treated  in  a  tolerably  uniform  way,  we  might 
expect  the  effect  produced  to  be  much  the  same  in  all 
ordinary  cases. 

We  see,  also,  that  any  important  change  in  treatment 
and  surroundings,  if  not  sufficient  to  kill,  would  and 
does  tend  to  produce  not  only  variability  but  sterility, 
as  part  of  the  same  story  and  for  the  same  reason — 
namely,  default  of  memory;  this  default  will  be  of 
every  degree  of  intensity,  from  total  failure,  to  a  slight 
disturbance  of  memory  as  affecting  some  one  particular 
organ  only;  that  is  to  say,  from  total  sterility,  to  a 
slight  variation  in  an  unimportant  part.  So  that  even 


224  LIFE  AND  HABIT. 

the  slightest  conceivable  variations  should  le  referred  to 
changed  conditions,  external  or  internal,  and  to  their  dis- 
turbing effects  upon  the  memory;  and  sterility,  without 
any  apparent  disease  of  the  reproductive  system,  may 
be  referred  not  so  much  to  special  delicacy  or  suscep- 
tibility of  the  organs  of  reproduction  as  to  inability  on 
the  part  of  the  creature  to  know  where  it  is,  and  to 
recognise  itself  as  the  same  creature  which  it  has  been 
accustomed  to  reproduce. 

Mr.  Darwin  thinks  that  the  comparison  of  habit  with 
instinct  gives  "  an  accurate  notion  of  the  frame  of  mind 
under  which  an  instinctive  action  is  performed,  but 
not,"  he  thinks,  "  of  its  origin." 

"  How  unconsciously,"  Mr.  Darwin  continues,  "  many 
habitual  actions  are  performed,  indeed  not  rarely  in 
direct  opposition  to  our  conscious  will !  Yet  they  may 
be  modified  by  the  will  or  by  reason.  Habits  easily 
become  associated  with  other  habits,  with  certain  periods 
of  time  and  states  of  body.  When  once  acquired,  they 
often  remain  constant  throughout  life.  Several  other 
points  of  resemblance  between  instincts  and  habits 
could  be  pointed  out.  As  in  repeating  a  well-known 
song,  so  in  instincts,  one  action  follows  another  by  a 
sort  of  rhythm.  If  a  person  be  interrupted  in  a  song 
or  in  repeating  anything  by  rote,  he  is  generally  forced 
to  go  back  to  recover  the  habitual  train  of  thought; 
so  P.  Huber  found  it  was  with  a  caterpillar,  which 
makes  a  very  complicated  hammock.  For  if  he  took 
a  caterpillar  which  had  completed  its  hammock  up 
to,  say,  the  sixth  stage  of  construction,  and  put  it  into 
a  hammock  completed  up  only  to  the  third  stage,  the 


INSTINCTS  OF  NEUTER  INSECTS.         225 

caterpillar  simply  re-performed  the  fourth,  fifth,  and 
sixth  stages  of  construction.  If,  however,  a  caterpillar 
were  taken  out  of  a  hammock  made  up,  for  instance,  to 
the  third  stage,  and  were  put  into  one  finished  up  to  the 
sixth  stage,  so  that  much  of  its  work  was  already  done 
for  it,  far  from  deriving  any  benefit  from  this,  it  was 
much  embarrassed,  and  in  order  to  complete  its  ham- 
mock, seemed  forced  to  start  from  the  third  stage,  where 
it  had  left  off,  and  thus  tried  to  complete  the  already 
finished  work." 

I  see  I  must  have  unconsciously  taken  my  first 
chapter  from  this  passage,  but  it  is  immaterial.  I  owe 
Mr.  Darwin  much  more  than  this.  I  owe  it  to  him  that 
I  believe  in  evolution  at  all.  I  owe  him  for  almost  all 
the  facts  which  have  led  me  to  differ  from  him,  and 
which  I  feel  absolutely  safe  in  taking  for  granted,  if 
he  has  advanced  them.  Nevertheless,  I  believe  that 
the  conclusion  arrived  at  in  the  passage  which  I  will 
next  quote  is  a  mistaken  one,  and  that  not  a  little 
only,  but  fundamentally.  I  shall  therefore  venture  to 
dispute  it. 

The  passage  runs : — 

"If  we  suppose  any  habitual  action  to  become  in- 
herited— and  it  can  be  shown  that  this  does  sometimes 
happen — then  the  resemblance  between  what  originally 
was  a  habit  and  an  instinct  becomes  so  close  as  not  to 
be  distinguished.  .  .  .  But  it  would  be  a  serious  error  to 
suppose  tliat  the  greater  number  of  instincts  have  been 
acquired  by  habit  in  one  generation,  and  then  transmitted 
by  inheritance  to  succeeding  generations.  It  can  be  clearly 
shown  that  the  most  wonderful  instincts  with  which  we 


226  LIFE  AND  HABIT. 

art  acquainted — namely,  those  of  the  hive-lee  and  of 
many  ants,  could  not  possibly  have  been  acquired  by  habit" 
("Origin  of  Species,"  p.  206,  ed.  1876.)  The  italics  in 
this  passage  are  mine. 

No  difficulty  is  opposed  to  my  view  (as  I  call  it,  for 
the  sake  of  brevity)  by  such  an  instinct  as  that  of  ants 
to  milk  aphids.  Such  instincts  may  be  supposed  to 
have  been  acquired  in  much  the  same  way  as  the  in- 
stinct of  a  farmer  to  keep  a  cow.  Accidental  discovery 
of  the  fact  that  the  excretion  was  good,  with  "  a  little 
dose  of  judgement  or  reason  "  from  time  to  time  appear- 
ing in  an  exceptionally  clever  ant,  and  by  him  com- 
municated to  his  fellows,  till  the  habit  was  so  confirmed 
as  to  be  capable  of  transmission  in  full  unself-con- 
sciousness  (if  indeed  the  instinct  be  unself-conscious  in 
this  case),  would,  I  think,  explain  this  as  readily  as  the 
slow  and  gradual  accumulations  of  instincts  which  had 
never  passed  through  the  intelligent  and  self-conscious 
stage,  but  had  always  prompted  action  without  any  idea 
of  a  why  or  a  wherefore  on  the  part  of  the  creature  itself. 

For  it  must  be  remembered,  as  I  am  afraid  I  have 
already  perhaps  too  often  said,  that  even  when  we  have 
got  a  slight  variation  of  instinct,  due  to  some  cause 
which  we  know  nothing  about,  but  which  I  will  not 
even  for  a  moment  call  "spontaneous" — a  word  that 
should  be  cut  out  of  every  dictionary,  or  in  some  way 
branded  as  perhaps  the  most  misleading  in  the  lan- 
guage— we  cannot  see  how  it  comes  to  be  repeated  in 
successive  generations,  so  as  to  be  capable  of  being 
acted  upon  by  "natural  selection"  and  accumulated,  un- 
less it  be  also  capable  of  being  remembered  by  the  off- 


INSTINCTS  OF  NEUTER  INSECTS.         227 

spring  of  the  varying  creature.  It  may  be  answered 
that  we  cannot  know  anything  about  this,  but  that 
"like  father  like  son"  is  an  ultimate  fact  in  nature. 
I  can  only  answer  that  I  never  observe  any  "like 
father  like  son"  without  the  son's  both  having  had 
every  opportunity  of  remembering,  and  showing  every 
symptom  of  having  remembered,  in  which  case  I  decline 
to  go  further  than  memory  (whatever  memory  may  be) 
as  the  cause  of  the  phenomenon. 

But  besides  inheritance,  teaching  must  be  admitted 
as  a  means  of  at  any  rate  modifying  an  instinct.  We 
observe  this  in  our  own  case ;  and  we  know  that  animals 
have  great  powers  of  communicating  their  ideas  to  one 
another,  though  their  manner  of  doing  this  is  as  incom- 
prehensible by  us  as  a  plant's  knowledge  of  chemistry, 
or  the  manner  in  which  an  amceba  makes  its  test,  or 
a  spider  its  web,  without  having  gone  through  a  long 
course  of  mathematics.  I  think  most  readers  will  allow 
that  our  early  training  and  the  theological  systems  of 
the  last  eighteen  hundred  years  are  likely  to  have  made 
us  involuntarily  under-estimate  the  powers  of  animals 
low  in  the  scale  of  life,  both  as  regards  intelligence 
and  the  power  of  communicating  their  ideas  to  one 
another ;  but  even  now  we  admit  that  ants  have  great 
powers  in  this  respect. 

A  habit,  however,  which  is  taught  to  the  young  ol 
each  successive  generation,  by  older  members  of  the 
community  who  have  themselves  received  it  by  instruc- 
tion, should  surely  rank  as  an  inherited  habit,  and  be 
considered  as  due  to  memory,  though  personal  teaching 
be  necessary  to  complete  the  inheritance. 


228  LIFE  AND  HABIT. 

An  objection  suggests  itself  that  if  such  a  habit  as  the 
flight  of  birds,  which  seems  to  require  a  little  personal 
supervision  and  instruction  before  it  is  acquired  per- 
fectly, were  really  due  to  memory,  the  need  of  instruc- 
tion would  after  a  time  cease,  inasmuch  as  the  creature 
would  remember  its  past  method  of  procedure,  and 
would  thus  come  to  need  no  more  teaching.  The 
answer  lies  in  the  fact,  that  if  a  creature  gets  to  depend 
upon  teaching  and  personal  help  for  any  matter,  its 
memory  will  make  it  look  for  such  help  on  each  repeti- 
tion of  the  action;  so  we  see  that  no  man's  memory 
will  exert  itself  much  until  he  is  thrown  upon  memory 
as  his  only  resource.  We  may  read  a  page  of  a  book  a 
hundred  times,  but  we  do  not  remember  it  by  heart 
unless  we  have  either  cultivated  our  powers  of  learning 
to  repeat,  or  have  taken  pains  to  learn  this  particular 
page. 

And  whether  we  read  from  a  book,  or  whether  we 
repeat  by  heart,  the  repetition  is  still  due  to  memory ; 
only  in  the  one  case  the  memory  is  exerted  to  recall 
something  which  one  saw  only  half  a  second  ago,  and 
in  the  other,  to  recall  something  not  seen  for  a  much 
longer  period.  So  I  imagine  an  instinct  or  habit  may 
be  called  an  inherited  habit,  and  assigned  to  memory, 
even  though  the  memory  dates,  not  from  the  perform- 
ance of  the  action  by  the  learner  when  he  was  actually 
part  of  the  personality  of  the  teacher,  but  rather  from 
a  performance  witnessed  by,  or  explained  by  the 
teacher  to,  the  pupil  at  a  period  subsequent  to  birth. 
In  either  case  the  habit  is  inherited  in  the  sense  of  being 
acquired  in  one  generation,  and  transmitted  with  such 


INSTINCTS  OF  NEUTER  INSECTS.         229 

modifications  as  genius  and  experience  may  have  sug- 
gested. 

Mr.  Darwin  would  probably  admit  this  without  hesi- 
tation; when,  therefore,  he  says  that,  certain  instincts 
could  not  possibly  have  been  acquired  by  habit,  he 
must  mean  that  they  could  not,  under  the  circumstances, 
have  been  remembered  by  the  pupil  in  the  person  of 
the  teacher,  and  that  it  would  be  a  serious  error  to  sup- 
pose that  the  greater  number  of  instincts  can  be  thus 
remembered.  To  which  I  assent  readily  so  far  as  that 
it  is  difficult  (though  not  impossible)  to  see  how  some 
of  the  most  wonderful  instincts  of  neuter  ants  and  bees 
can  be  due  to  the  fact  that  the  neuter  ant  or  bee  was 
ever  in  part,  or  in  some  respects,  another  neuter  ant  or 
bee  in  a  previous  generation.  At  the  same  time  I  main- 
tain that  this  does  not  militate  against  the  supposition 
that  both  instinct  and  structure  are  in  the  main  due  to 
memory.  For  the  power  of  receiving  any  communi- 
cation, and  acting  on  it,  is  due  to  memory;  and  the 
neuter  ant  or  bee  may  have  received  its  lesson  from 
another  neuter  ant  or  bee,  who  had  it  from  another  and 
modified  it ;  and  so  back  and  back,  till  the  foundation 
of  the  habit  is  reached,  and  is  found  to  present  little 
more  than  the  faintest  family  likeness  to  its  more  com- 
plex descendant.  Surely  Mr.  Darwin  cannot  mean  that 
it  can  be  shewn  that  the  wonderful  instincts  of  neuter 
ants  and  bees  cannot  have  been  acquired  either,  as  above, 
by  instruction,  or  by  some  not  immediately  obvious  form 
of  inherited  transmission,  but  that  they  must  be  due  to 
the  fact  that  the  ant  or  bee  is,  as  it  were,  such  and  such  a 
machine,  of  which  if  you  touch  such  and  such  a  spring, 


230  LIFE  AND  HABIT. 

you  will  get  a  corresponding  action.  If  lie  does,  he  will 
find,  so  far  as  I  can  see,  no  escape  from  a  position  very 
similar  to  the  one  which  I  put  into  the  mouth  of  the 
first  of  the  two  professors,  who  dealt  with  the  question 
of  machinery  in  my  earlier  work,  "  Erewhon,"  and  which 
I  have  since  found  that  my  great  namesake  made  fun 
of  in  the  following  lines : — 

"  They  now  begun 
To  spur  their  living  engines  on. 
For  as  whipped  tops  and  bandy'd  balls, 
The  learned  hold  are  animals  : 
So  horses  they  affirm  to  be 
Mere  engines  made  by  geometry, 
And  were  invented  first  from  engines 
As  Indian  Britons  were  from  Penguins." 

—Hudibras,  Canto  ii.  line  53,  &c. 

I  can  see,  then,  no  difficulty  in  the  development  of 
the  ordinary  so-called  instincts,  whether  of  ants  or  bees, 
or  the  cuckoo,  or  any  other  animal,  on  the  supposition 
that  they  were,  for  the  most  part,  intelligently  acquired 
with  more  or  less  labour,  as  the  case  may  be,  in  much 
the  same  way  as  we  see  any  art  or  science  now  in  pro- 
cess of  acquisition  among  ourselves,  but  were  ultimately 
remembered  by  offspring,  or  communicated  to  it.  When 
the  limits  of  the  race's  capacity  had  been  attained  (and 
most  races  seem  to  have  their  limits,  unsatisfactory 
though  the  expression  may  very  fairly  be  considered),  or 
when  the  creature  had  got  into  a  condition,  so  to  speak, 
of  equilibrium  with  its  surroundings,  there  would  be  no 
new  development  of  instincts,  and  the  old  ones  would 
cease  to  be  improved,  inasmuch  as  there  would  be  no 


INSTINCTS  OF  NEUTER  INSECTS.         231 

more  reasoning  or  difference  of  opinion  concerning 
them.  The  race,  therefore,  or  species  would  remain 
in  statu  quo  till  either  domesticated,  and  so  brought 
into  contact  with  new  ideas  and  placed  in  changed 
conditions,  or  put  under  such  pressure,  in  a  wild  state, 
as  should  force  it  to  further  invention,  or  extinguish  it 
if  incapable  of  rising  to  the  occasion.  That  instinct 
and  structure  may  be  acquired  by  practice  in  one  or 
more  generations,  and  remembered  in  succeeding  ones, 
is  admitted  by  Mr.  Darwin,  for  he  allows  ("  Origin  of 
Species,"  p.  206)  that  habitual  action  does  sometimes 
become  inherited,  and,  though  he  does  not  seem  to 
conceive  of  such  action  as  due  to  memory,  yet  it  is 
inconceivable  how  it  is  inherited,  if  not  as  the  result  of 
memory. 

It  must  be  admitted,  however,  that  when  we  come 
to  consider  the  structures  as  well  as  the  instincts 
of  some  of  the  neuter  insects,  our  difficulties  seem 
greatly  increased.  The  neuter  hive-bees  have  a  cavity 
in  their  thighs  in  which  to  keep  the  wax,  which  it  is 
their  business  to  collect;  but  the  drones  and  queen, 
which  alone  bear  offspring,  collect  no  wax,  and  there- 
fore neither  want,  nor  have,  any  such  cavity.  The 
neuter  bees  are  also,  if  I  understand  rightly,  furnished 
with  a  proboscis  or  trunk  for  extracting  honey  from 
flowers,  whereas  the  fertile  bees,  who  gather  no  honey, 
have  no  such  proboscis.  Imagine,  if  the  reader  will, 
that  the  neuter  bees  differ  still  more  widely  from  the 
fertile  ones ;  how,  then,  can  they  in  any  sense  be  said 
to  derive  organs  from  their  parents,  which  not  one  of 
their  parents  for  millions  of  generations  has  ever  had  ? 
Q 


232  LIFE  AND  HABIT. 

How,  again,  can  it  be  supposed  that  they  transmit 
these  organs  to  the  future  neuter  members  of  the  com- 
munity when  they  are  perfectly  sterile  ? 

One  can  understand  that  the  young  neuter  bee  might 
be  taught  to  make  a  hexagonal  cell  (though  I  have 
not  found  that  any  one  has  seen  the  lesson  being  given) 
inasmuch  as  it  does  not  make  the  cell  till  after  birth, 
and  till  after  it  has  seen  other  neuter  bees  who  might 
tell  it  much  in,  qua  us,  a  very  little  time ;  but  we  can 
hardly  understand  its  growing  a  proboscis  before  it  could 
possibly  want  it,  or  preparing  a  cavity  in  its  thigh,  to 
have  it  ready  to  put  wax  into,  when  none  of  its  pre- 
decessors had  ever  done  so,  by  supposing  oral  com- 
munication, during  the  larvahood.  Nevertheless,  it 
must  not  be  forgotten  that  bees  seem  to  know  secrets 
about  reproduction,  which  utterly  baffle  ourselves;  for 
example,  the  queen  bee  appears  to  know  how  to 
deposit  male  or  female  eggs  at  will ;  and  this  is  a 
matter  of  almost  inconceivable  sociological  import- 
ance, denoting  a  corresponding  amounc  of  sociological, 
and  physiological  knowledge  generally.  It  should 
not,  then,  surprise  us  if  the  race  should  possess  other 
secrets,  whose  working  we  are  unable  to  follow,  or  even 
detect  at  all. 

Sydney  Smith,  indeed,  writes : — 

"  The  warmest  admirers  of  honey,  and  the  greatest 
friends  to  bees,  will  never,  I  presume,  contend  that  the 
young  swarm,  who  begin  making  honey  three  or  four 
months  after  they  are  born,  and  immediately  construct 
these  mathematical  cells,  should  have  gained  their 
geometrical  knowledge  as  we  gain  ours,  and  in  three 


INSTINCTS  OF  NEUTER  INSECTS.         233 

months'  time  outstrip  Mr.  Maclaurin  in  mathematics 
as  much  as  they  did  in  making  honey.  It  would  take 
a  senior  wrangler  at  Cambridge  ten  hours  a  day  for 
three  years  together  to  know  enough  mathematics  for  the 
calculation  of  these  problems,  with  which  not  only  every 
queen  bee,  but  every  undergraduate  grab,  is  acquainted 
the  moment  it  is  born."  This  last  statement  may  be  a 
little  too  strong,  but  it  will  at  once  occur  to  the  reader, 
that  as  we  know  the  bees  do  surpass  Mr.  Maclaurin  in 
the  power  of  making  honey,  they  may  also  surpass  him 
in  capacity  for  those  branches  of  mathematics  with 
which  it  has  been  their  business  to  be  conversant  during 
many  millions  of  years,  and  also  in  knowledge  of  phy- 
siology and  psychology  in  so  far  as  the  knowledge  bears 
upon  the  interests  of  their  own  community. 

We  know  that  the  larva  which  develops  into  a 
neuter  bee,  and  that  again  which  in  time  becomes  a 
queen  bee,  are  the  same  kind  of  larva  to  start  with ; 
and  that  if  you  give  one  of  these  larvse  the  food  and 
treatment  which  all  its  foremothers  have  been  accus- 
tomed to,  it  will  turn  out  with  all  the  structure  and 
instincts  of  its  foremothers — and  that  it  only  fails  to 
do  this  because  it  has  been  fed,  and  otherwise  treated, 
in  such  a  manner  as  not  one  of  its  foremothers  was 
ever  yet  fed  or  treated.  So  far,  this  is  exactly  what  we 
should  expect,  on  the  view  that  structure  and  instinct 
are  alike  mainly  due  to  memory,  or  to  medicined 
memory.  Give  the  larva  a  fair  chance  of  knowing 
where  it  is,  and  it  shows  that  it  remembers  by  doing 
exactly  what  it  did  before.  Give  it  a  different  kind  of 
food  and  house,  and  it  cannot  be  expected  to  be  any- 


234  LIFE  AND  HABIT. 

thing  else  than  puzzled.  It  remembers  a  great  deal, 
it  comes  out  a  bee,  and  nothing  but  a  bee ;  but  it  is  an 
aborted  bee ;  it  is,  in  fact,  mutilated  before  birth  instead 
of  after — with  instinct,  as  well  as  growth,  correlated  to 
its  abortion,  as  we  see  happens  frequently  in  the  case 
of  animals  a  good  deal  higher  than  bees  that  have  been 
mutilated  at  a  stage  much  later  than  that  at  which  the 
abortion  of  neuter  bees  commences. 

The  larroe  being  similar  to  start  with,  and  being  simi- 
larly mutilated — i.e.,  by  change  of  food  and  dwelling, 
will  naturally  exhibit  much  similarity  of  instinct  and 
structure  on  arriving  at  maturity.  When  driven  from 
their  usual  course,  they  must  take  same  new  course  or 
die.  There  is  nothing  strange  in  the  fact  that  similar 
beings  puzzled  similarly  should  take  a  similar  line  of 
action.  I  grant,  however,  that  it  is  hard  to  see  how 
change  of  food  and  treatment  can  puzzle  an  insect  into 
such  "  complex  growth  "  as  that  it  should  make  a  cavity 
in  its  thigh,  grow  an  invaluable  proboscis,  and  betray 
a  practical  knowledge  of  difficult  mathematical  pro- 
blems. 

But  it  must  be  remembered  that  the  memory  of 
having  been  queen  bees  and  drones — which  is  all  that 
according  to  my  supposition  the  larvae  can  remember, 
(on  a  first  view  of  the  case),  in  their  own  proper  per- 
sons— would  nevertheless  carry  with  it  a  potential 
recollection  of  all  the  social  arrangements  of  the  hive. 
They  would  thus  potentially  remember  that  the  mass 
of  the  bees  were  always  neuter  bees ;  they  would  re- 
member potentially  the  habits  of  these  bees,  so  far  as 
drones  and  queens  know  anything  about  them ;  and  this 


INSTINCTS  OF  NEUTER  INSECTS.          235 

may  be  supposed  to  be  a  very  thorough  acquaintance ; 
in  like  manner,  and  with  the  same  limitation,  they 
would  know  from  the  very  moment  that  they  left  the 
queen's  body  that  neuter  bees  had  a  proboscis  to  gather 
honey  with,  and  cavities  in  their  thighs  to  put  wax  into, 
and  that  cells  were  to  be  made  with  certain  angles — 
for  surely  it  is  not  crediting  the  queen  with  more 
knowledge  than  she  is  likely  to  possess,  if  we  suppose 
her  to  have  a  fair  acquaintance  with  the  phenomena  of 
wax  and  cells  generally,  even  though  she  does  not  make 
any;  they  would  know  (while  still  larvae — and  earlier) 
the  kind  of  cells  into  which  neuter  bees  were  commonly 
put,  and  the  kind  of  treatment  they  commonly  received 
— they  might  therefore,  as  eggs — immediately  on  find- 
ing their  recollection  driven  from  its  usual  course,  so 
that  they  must  either  find  some  other  course,  or  die — 
know  that  they  were  being  treated  as  neuter  bees  are 
treated,  and  that  they  were  expected  to  develop  into 
neuter  bees  accordingly ;  they  might  know  all  this,  and 
a  great  deal  more  into  the  bargain,  inasmuch  as  even 
before  being  actually  deposited  as  eggs  they  would 
know  and  remember  potentially,  but  unconsciously,  all 
that  their  parents  knew  and  remembered  intensely.  Is 
it,  then,  astonishing  that  they  should  adapt  themselves 
so  readily  to  the  position  which  they  know  it  is  for  the 
social  welfare  of  the  community,  and  hence  of  them- 
selves, that  they  should  occupy,  and  that  they  should 
know  that  they  will  want  a  cavity  in  their  thighs  and 
a  proboscis,  and  hence  make  such  implements  out  of 
their  protoplasm  as  readily  as  they  make  their 
wings  ? 


236  LIFE  AND  HABIT. 

I  admit  that,  under  normal  treatment,  none  of  the 
above-mentioned  potential  memories  would  be  kindled 
into  such  a  state  of  activity  that  action  would  follow 
upon  them,  until  the  creature  had  attained  a  more  or 
less  similar  condition  to  that  in  which  its  parent  was 
when  these  memories  were  active  within  its  mind :  but 
the  essence  of  the  matter  is,  that  these  larvas  have  been 
treated  abnormally,  so  that  if  they  do  not  die,  there  is 
nothing  for  it  but  that  they  must  vary.  One  cannot 
argue  from  the  normal  to  the  abnormal.  It  would  not, 
then,  be  strange  if  the  potential  memories  should  (owing 
to  the  margin  for  premature  or  tardy  development  which 
association  admits)  serve  to  give  the  puzzled  larvae  a 
hint  as  to  the  course  which  they  had  better  take,  or  that, 
at  any  rate,  it  should  greatly  supplement  the  instruction 
of  the  "  nurse  "  bees  themselves  by  rendering  the  larvae 
so,  as  it  were,  inflammable  on  this  point,  that  a  spark 
should  set  them  in  a  blaze.  Abortion  is  generally  pre- 
mature. Thus  the  scars  referred  to  in  the  last  chapter 
as  having  appeared  on  the  children  of  men  who  had 
been  correspondingly  wounded,  should  not,  under  normal 
circumstances,  have  appeared  in  the  offspring  till  the 
children  had  got  fairly  near  the  same  condition  gener- 
ally as  that  in  which  their  fathers  were  when  they  were 
wounded,  and  even  then,  normally,  there  should  have 
been  an  instrument  to  wound  them,  much  as  their 
fathers  had  been  wounded.  Association,  however,  does 
not  always  stick  to  the  letter  of  its  bond. 

The  line,  again,  might  certainly  be  taken  that  the 
difference  in  structure  and  instincts  between  neuter  and 
fertile  bees  is  due  to  the  specific  effects  of  certain  food 


INSTINCTS  OF  NEUTER  INSECTS.         237 

and  treatment ;  yet,  though  one  would  be  sorry  to  set 
limits  to  the  convertibility  of  food  and  genius,  it  seems 
hard  to  believe  that  there  can  be  any  untutored  food 
which  should  teach  a  bee  to  make  a  hexagonal  cell  as 
soon  as  it  was  born,  or  which,  before  it  was  born,  should 
teach  it  to  prepare  such  structures  as  it  would  require 
in  after  life.  If,  then,  food  be  considered  as  a  direct 
agent  in  causing  the  structures  and  instinct,  and  not  an 
indirect  agent,  merely  indicating  to  the  larva  itself 
that  it  is  to  make  itself  after  the  fashion  of  neuter 
bees,  then  we  should  bear  in  mind  that,  at  any  rate,  it 
has  been  leavened  and  prepared  in  the  stomachs  of 
those  neuter  bees  into  which  the  larva  is  now  expected 
to  develop  itself,  and  may  thus  have  in  it  more  true 
germinative  matter — gernmules,  in  fact — than  is  com- 
monly supposed.  Food,  when  sufficiently  assimilated 
(the  whole  question  turning  upon  what  is  "  sufficiently"), 
becomes  stored  with  all  the  experience  and  memories 
of  the  assimilating  creature;  corn  becomes  hen,  and 
knows  nothing  but  hen,  when  hen  has  eaten  it.  We 
know  also  that  the  neuter  working-bees  inject  matter 
into  the  cell  after  the  larva  has  been  produced;  nor 
would  it  seem  harsh  to  suppose  that  though  devoid  of 
a  reproductive  system  like  that  of  their  parents,  they 
may  yet  be  practically  not  so  neuter  as  is  commonly 
believed.  One  cannot  say  what  gemmules  of  thigh  and 
proboscis  may  not  have  got  into  the  neutral  bees' 
stomachs,  if  they  assimilate  their  food  sufficiently,  and 
thus  into  the  larva. 

Mr.  Darwin  will  be  the  first  to  admit  that  though  a 
creature  have  no  reproductive  system,  in  any  ordinary 


238  LIFE  AND  HABIT. 

sense  of  the  word,  yet  every  unit  or  cell  of  its  body 
may  throw  off  geinmules  which  may  be  free  to  move 
over  every  part  of  the  whole  organism,  and  which 
"  natural  selection "  might  in  time  cause  to  stray  into 
food  which  had  been  sufficiently  prepared  in  the 
stomachs  of  the  neuter  bees. 

I  cannot  say,  then,  precisely  in  what  way,  but  I  can 
see  no  reason  for  doubting  that  in  some  of  the  ways 
suggested  above,  or  in  some  combination  of  them,  the 
phenomena  of  the  instincts  of  neuter  ants  and  bees 
can  be  brought  into  the  same  category  as  the  instincts 
and  structure  of  fertile  animals.  At  any  rate,  I  see  the 
great  fact  that  when  treated  as  they  have  been  accus- 
tomed to  be  treated,  these  neuters  act  as  though  they 
remembered,  and  accordingly  become  queen  bees ;  and 
that  they  only  depart  from  their  ancestral  course  on 
being  treated  in  such  fashion  as  their  ancestors  can 
never  have  remembered;  also,  that  when  they  have 
been  thrown  off  their  accustomed  line  of  thought  and 
action,  they  only  take  that  of  their  nurses,  who  have 
been  about  them  from  the  moment  of  their  being 
deposited  as  eggs  by  the  queen  bee,  who  have  fed  them 
from  their  own  bodies,  and  between  whom  and  them 
there  may  have  been  all  manner  of  physical  and  mental 
communication,  of  which  we  know  no  more  than  we  do 
of  the  power  which  enables  a  bee  to  find  its  way  home 
after  infinite  shifting  and  turning  among  flowers,  which 
no  human  powers  could  systematise  so  as  to  avoid  con- 
fusion. 

Or  take  it  thus :  We  know  that  mutilation  at  an  early 
age  produces  an  effect  upon  the  structure  and  instincts 


INSTINCTS  OF  NEUTER  INSECTS.         239 

of  cattle,  sheep,  and  horses ;  and  it  might  be  presumed 
that  if  feasible  at  an  earlier  age,  it  would  produce  a 
still  more  marked  effect.  We  observe  that  the  effect 
produced  is  uniform,  or  nearly  so.  Suppose  mutilation 
to  produce  a  little  more  effect  than  it  does,  as  we  might 
easily  do,  if  cattle,  sheep,  and  horses  had  been  for  ages 
accustomed  to  a  mutilated  class  living  among  them, 
which  class  had  been  always  a  caste  apart,  and  had  fed 
the  young  neuters  from  their  own  bodies,  from  an  early 
embryonic  stage  onwards ;  would  any  one  in  this  case 
dream  of  advancing  the  structure  and  instincts  of  this 
mutilated  class  against  the  doctrine  that  instinct  is 
inherited  habit  ?  Or,  if  inclined  to  do  this,  would  he 
not  at  once  refrain,  on  remembering  that  the  process 
of  mutilation  might  be  arrested,  and  the  embryo  be 
developed  into  an  entire  animal  by  simply  treating  it 
in  the  way  to  which  all  its  ancestors  had  been  accus- 
tomed? Surely  he  would  not  allow  the  difficulty 
(which  I  must  admit  in  some  measure  to  remain)  to 
outweigh  the  evidence  derivable  from  these  very  neuter 
insects  themselves,  as  well  as  from  such  a  vast  number 
of  other  sources — all  pointing  in  the  direction  of  instinct 
as  inherited  habit.1 

Lastly,  it  must  be  remembered  that  the  instinct  to 
make  cells  and  honey  is  one  which  has  no  very  great 
told  upon  its  possessors.  Bees  can  make  cells  and 
honey,  nor  do  they  seem  to  have  any  very  violent 
objection  to  doing  so ;  but  it  is  quite  clear  that  there  is 
nothing  in  their  structure  and  instincts  which  urges 
them  on  to  do  these  things  for  the  mere  love  of  doing 
them,  as  a  hen  is  urged  to  sit  upon  a  chalk  stone,  con- 

1  See  Appendix. 


240  LIFE  AND  HAS  IT. 

cerning  which  she  probably  is  at  heart  utterly  sceptical, 
rather  than  not  sit  at  all.  There  is  no  honey  and  cell- 
making  instinct  so  strong  as  the  instinct  to  eat,  if  they 
are  hungry,  or  to  grow  wings,  and  make  themselves 
into  bees  at  all.  Like  ourselves,  so  long  as  they  can 
get  plenty  to  eat  and  drink,  they  will  do  no  work. 
Under  these  circumstances,  not  one  drop  of  honey  nor 
one  particle  of  wax  will  they  collect,  except,  I  presume, 
to  make  cells  for  the  rearing  of  their  young. 

Sydney  Smith  writes  : — 

"  The  most  curious  instance  of  a  change  of  instinct  is 
recorded  by  Darwin.  The  bees  carried  over  to  Barba- 
does  and  the  Western  Isles  ceased  to  lay  up  any  honey 
after  the  first  year,  as  they  found  it  not  useful  to  them. 
They  found  the  weather  so  fine,  and  materials  for 
making  honey  so  plentiful,  that  they  quitted  their- 
grave,  prudent,  and  mercantile  character,  became 
exceedingly  profligate  and  debauched,  ate  up  their 
capital,  resolved  to  work  no  more,  and  amused  them- 
selves by  flying  about  the  sugar-houses  and  stinging 
the  blacks "  (Lecture  XVII.  on  Moral  Philosophy). 
The  ease,  then,  with  which  the  honey-gathering  and 
cell-making  habits  are  relinquished,  would  seem  to  point 
strongly  in  the  direction  of  their  acquisition  at  a  com- 
paratively late  period  of  development. 

I  have  dealt  with  bees  only,  and  not  with  ants,  which 
would  perhaps  seem  to  present  greater  difficulty,  inas- 
much as  in  some  families  of  these  there  are  two,  or  even 
three,  castes  of  neuters  with  well-marked  and  wide  dif- 
ferences of  structure  and  instinct ;  but  I  think  the  reader 
will  agree  with  me  that  the  ants  are  sufficiently  covered 


INSTINCTS  OF  NEUTER  INSECTS.          241 

by  the  bees,  and  that  enough,  therefore,  has  been  said 
already.  Mr.  Darwin  supposes  that  these  modifications 
of  structure  and  instinct  have  been  effected  by  the  accu- 
mulation of  numerous  slight,  profitable,  spontaneous 
variations  on  the  part  of  the  fertile  parents,  which  has 
caused  them  (so,  at  least,  I  understand  him)  to  lay  this 
or  that  particular  kind  of  egg,  which  should  develop  into 
a  kind  of  bee  or  ant,  with  this  or  that  particular  instinct, 
which  instinct  is  merely  a  co-ordination  with  structure, 
and  in  no  way  attributable  to  use  or  habit  in  preceding 
generations. 

Even  so,  one  cannot  see  that  the  habit  of  laying  this 
particular  kind  of  egg  might  not  be  due  to  use  and 
memory  in  previous  generations  on  the  part  of  the 
fertile  parents,  "  for  the  numerous  slight  spontaneous 
variations,"  on  which  "  natural  selection "  is  to  work, 
must  have  had  some  cause  than  which  none  more 
reasonable  than  sense  of  need  and  experience  presents 
itself;  and  there  seems  hardly  any  limit  to  what  long- 
continued  faith  and  desire,  aided  by  intelligence,  may 
be  able  to  effect.  But  if  sense  of  need  and  experience 
are  denied,  I  see  no  escape  from  the  view  that  machines 
are  new  species  of  life. 

Mr.  Darwin  concludes :  "  I  am  surprised  that  no  one 
has  hitherto  advanced  tLis  demonstrative  case  of  neuter 
insects  against  the  well-known  doctrine  of  inherited 
habit  as  advanced  by  Lamarck "  ("  Natural  Selection," 
p.  233,  ed.  1876). 

After  reading  this,  one  feels  as  though  there  was  no 
more  to  be  said.  The  well-known  doctrine  of  inherited 
habit,  as  advanced  by  Lamarck,  has  indeed  been  long 


242  LIFE  AND  HABIT. 

since  so  thoroughly  exploded,  that  it  is  not  worth  while 
to  go  into  an  explanation  of  what  it  was,  or  to  refute  it  in 
detail.  Here,  however,  is  an  argument  against  it,  which 
is  so  much  better  than  anything  advanced  yet,  that  one 
is  surprised  it  has  never  been  made  use  of;  so  we  will 
just  advance  it,  as  it  were,  to  slay  the  slain,  and  pass  on. 
Such,  at  least,  is  the  effect  which  the  paragraph  above 
quoted  produced  upon  myself,  and  would,  I  think,  pro- 
duce on  the  great  majority  of  readers.  When  driven 
by  the  exigencies  of  my  own  position  to  examine  the 
value  of  the  demonstration  more  closely,  I  conclude, 
either  that  I  have  utterly  failed  to  grasp  Mr.  Darwin's 
meaning,  or  that  I  have  no  less  completely  mistaken 
the  value  and  bearing  of  the  facts  I  have  myself 
advanced  in  these  few  last  pages.  Failing  this,  my 
surprise  is,  not  that  "no  one  has  hitherto  advanced" 
the  instincts  of  neuter  insects  as  a  demonstrative  case 
against  the  doctrine  of  inherited  habit,  but  rather  that 
Mr.  Darwin  should  have  thought  the  case  demonstra- 
tive ;  or  again,  when  I  remember  that  the  neuter  work- 
ing bee  is  only  an  aborted  queen,  and  may  be  turned 
back  again  into  a  queen,  by  giving  it  such  treatment 
as  it  can  alone  be  expected  to  remember — then  I  am 
surprised  that  the  structure  and  instincts  of  neuter 
bees  has  never  (if  never)  been  brought  forward  in  sup- 
port of  the  doctrine  of  inherited  habit  as  advanced  by 
Lamarck,  and  against  any  theory  which  would  rob  such 
instincts  of  their  foundation  in  intelligence,  and  of  their 
connection  with  experience  and  memory. 

As  for  the  instinct  to  mutilate,  that  is  as  easily  ac- 
counted for  as  any  other  inherited  habit,  whether  of 


INSTINCTS  OF  NEUTER  INSECTS.  243 

man  to  mutilate  cattle,  or  of  ants  to  make  slaves,  or  of 
birds  to  make  their  nests.  I  can  see  no  way  of  accounting 
for  the  existence  of  any  one  of  these  instincts,  except  on 
the  supposition  that  they  have  arisen  gradually,  through 
perceptions  of  power  and  need  on  the  part  of  the  animal 
which  exhibits  them — these  two  perceptions  advancing 
hand  in  hand  from  generation  to  generation,  and  being 
accumulated  in  time  and  in  the  common  course  of 
nature. 

I  have  already  sufficiently  guarded  against  being  sup- 
posed to  maintain  that  very  long  before  an  instinct  or 
structure  was  developed,  the  creature  descried  it  in  the 
far  future,  and  made  towards  it.  We  do  not  observe 
this  to  be  the  manner  of  human  progress.  Our  mechani- 
cal inventions,  which,  as  I  ventured  to  say  in  "Erewhon," 
through  the  mouth  of  the  second  professor,  are  really 
nothing  but  extra-corporaneous  limbs— a  wooden  leg 
being  nothing  but  a  bad  kind  of  flesh  leg,  and  a  flesh 
leg  being  only  a  much  better  kind  of  wooden  leg 
than  any  creature  could  be  expected  to  manufacture 
introspectively  and  consciously  —  our  mechanical  in- 
ventions have  almost  invariably  grown  up  from  small 
beginnings,  and  without  any  very  distant  foresight  on 
the  part  of  the  inventors.  When  Watt  perfected  the 
steam  engine,  he  did  not,  it  seems,  foresee  the  locomo- 
tive, much  less  would  any  one  expect  a  savage  to  invent 
a  steam  engine.  A  child  breathes  automatically,  be- 
cause it  has  learnt  to  breathe  little  by  little,  and  has  now 
breathed  for  an  incalculable  length  of  time ;  but  it  can- 
not open  oysters  at  all,  nor  even  conceive  the  idea  of 
opening  oysters  for  two  or  three  years  after  it  is  born, 


244  LIFE  AND  HABIT. 

for  the  simple  reason  that  this  lesson  is  one  which  it  is 
only  beginning  to  learn.  All  I  maintain  is,  that,  give  a 
child  as  many  generations  of  practice  in  opening  oysters 
as  it  has  had  in  breathing  or  sucking,  and  it  would  on 
being  born,  turn  to  the  oyster-knife  no  less  naturally 
than  to  the  breast.  We  observe  that  among  certain 
families  of  men  there  has  been  a  tendency  to  vary  in 
the  direction  of  the  use  and  development  of  machinery ; 
and  that  in  a  certain  still  smaller  number  of  families, 
there  seems  to  be  an  almost  infinitely  great  capacity  for 
varying  and  inventing  still  further,  whether  socially  or 
mechanically;  while  other  families,  and  perhaps  the 
greater  number,  reach  a  certain  point  and  stop ;  but  we 
also  observe  that  not  even  the  most  inventive  races  ever 
see  very  far  ahead.  I  suppose  the  progress  of  plants 
and  animals  to  be  exactly  analogous  to  this. 

Mr.  Darwin  has  always  maintained  that  the  effects  of 
use  and  disuse  are  highly  important  in  the  develop- 
ment of  structure,  and  if,  as  he  has  said,  habits  are 
sometimes  inherited — then  they  should  sometimes  be 
important  also  in  the  development  of  instinct,  or  habit. 
But  what  does  the  development  of  an  instinct  or  struc- 
ture, or,  indeed,  any  effect  upon  the  organism  produced 
by  "  use  and  disuse,"  imply  ?  It  implies  an  effect  pro- 
duced by  a  desire  to  do  something  for  which  the 
organism  was  not  originally  well  adapted  or  sufficient, 
but  for  which  it  has  come  to  be  sufficient  in  conse- 
quence of  the  desire.  The  wish  has  been  father  to  the 
power;  but  this  again  opens  up  the  whole  theory  of 
Lamarck,  that  the  development  of  organs  has  been  due 
to  the  wants  or  desires  of  the  animal  in  which  the 


INSTINCTS  OF  NEUTER  INSECTS.  245 

organ  appears.     So  far  as  I  can  see,  I  am  insisting  on 
little  more  than  this. 

Once  grant  that  a  blacksmith's  arm  grows  thicker 
through  hammering  iron,  and  you  have  an  organ  modified 
in  accordance  with  a  need  or  wish.  Let  the  desire  and 
the  practice  be  remembered,  and  go  on  for  long  enough, 
and  the  slight  alterations  of  the  organ  will  be  accumu- 
lated, until  they  are  checked  either  by  the  creature's 
having  got  all  that  he  cares  about  making  serious  further 
effort  to  obtain,  or  until  his  wants  prove  inconvenient 
to  other  creatures  that  are  stronger  than  he,  and  he  is 
hence  brought  to  a  standstill.  Use  and  disuse,  then,  with 
me,  and,  as  I  gather  also,  with  Lamarck,  are  the  keys  to 
the  position,  coupled,  of  course,  with  continued  person- 
ality and  memory.  No  sudden  and  striking  changes 
would  be  effected,  except  that  occasionally  a  blunder 
might  prove  a  happy  accident,  as  happens  not  unfre- 
quently  with  painters,  musicians,  chemists,  and  in- 
ventors at  the  present  day;  or  sometimes  a  creature, 
with  exceptional  powers  of  memory  or  reflection,  would 
make  his  appearance  in  this  race  or  in  that.  We  all 
profit  by  our  accidents  as  well  as  by  our  more  cunning 
contrivances,  so  that  analogy  would  point  in  the  direc- 
tion of  thinking  that  many  of  the  most  happy  thoughts 
in  the  animal  and  vegetable  kingdom  were  originated 
much  as  certain  discoveries  that  have  been  made  by 
accident  among  ourselves.  These  would  be  originally 
blind  variations,  though  even  so,  probably  less  blind 
than  we  think,  if  we  could  know  the  whole  truth. 
When  originated,  they  would  be  eagerly  taken  advan- 
tage of  and  improved  upon  by  the  animal  in  whom  they 


246  LIFE  AND  HABIT. 

appeared;  but  it  cannot  be  supposed  that  they  would  be 
very  far  in  advance  of  the  last  step  gained,  more  than  are 
those  "  flukes  "  which  sometimes  enable  us  to  go  so  far 
beyond  our  own  ordinary  powers.  For  if  they  were,  the 
animal  would  despair  of  repeating  them.  No  creature 
hopes,  or  even  wishes,  for  very  much  more  than  he  has 
been  accustomed  to  all  his  life,  he  and  his  family,  and 
the  others  whom  he  can  understand,  around  him.  It  has 
been  well  said  that  "  enough  "  is  always  "  a  little  more 
than  one  has."  We  do  not  try  for  things  which  we  believe 
to  be  beyond  our  reach,  hence  one  would  expect  that  the 
fortunes,  as  it  were,  of  animals  should  have  been  built 
up  gradually.  Our  own  riches  grow  with  our  desires 
and  the  pains  we  take  in  pursuit  of  them,  and  our 
desires  vary  and  increase  with  our  means  of  gratifying 
them;  but  unless  with  men  of  exceptional  business 
aptitude,  wealth  grows  gradually  by  the  adding  field  to 
field  and  farm  to  farm ;  so  with  the  limbs  and  instincts 
of  animals ;  these  are  but  the  things  they  have  made 
or  bought  with  their  money,  or  with  money  that  has 
been  left  them  by  their  forefathers,  which,  though  it  is 
neither  silver  nor  gold,  but  faith  and  protoplasm  only, 
is  good  money  and  capital  notwithstanding. 

I  have  already  admitted  that  instinct  may  be  modi- 
fied by  food  or  drugs,  which  may  affect  a  structure  or 
habit  as  powerfully  as  we  see  certain  poisons  affect  the 
structure  of  plants  by  producing,  as  Mr.  Darwin  tells 
us,  very  complex  galls  upon  their  leaves.  I  do  not, 
therefore,  for  a  moment  insist  on  habit  as  the  sole  cause 
of  instinct.  Every  habit  must  have  had  its  originating 
cause,  and  the  causes  which  have  started  one  habit  will 


INSTINCTS  OF  NEUTER  INSECTS.          247 

from  time  to  time  start  or  modify  others;  nor  can  I 
explain  why  some  individuals  of  a  race  should  be 
cleverer  than  others,  any  more  than  I  can  explain  why 
they  should  exist  at  all ;  nevertheless,  I  observe  it  to  be 
a  fact  that  differences  in  intelligence  and  power  of 
growth  are  universal  in  the  individuals  of  all  those 
races  which  we  can  best  watch.  I  also  most  readily 
admit  that  the  common  course  of  nature  would  both 
cause  many  variations  to  arise  independently  of  any 
desire  on  the  part  of  the  animal  (much  as  we  have 
lately  seen  that  the  moons  of  Mars  were  on  the  point 
of  being  discovered  three  hundred  years  ago,  merely 
through  Galileo  sending  to  Kepler  a  Latin  anagram 
which  Kepler  could  not  understand,  and  arranged  into 
the  line — "  Salve  umlistineuin  geminatum  Martia  pro- 
Urn"  and  interpreted  to  mean  that  Mars  had  two  moons, 
whereas  Galileo  had  meant  to  say  "Altissimum  planetam 
tergeminum  observavi,"  meaning  that  he  had  seen  Saturn's 
ring),  and  would  also  preserve  and  accumulate  such 
variations  when  they  had  arisen ;  but  I  can  no  more 
believe  that  the  wonderful  adaptation  of  structures  to 
needs,  which  we  see  around  us  in  such  an  infinite 
number  of  plants  and  animals,  can  have  arisen  without 
a  perception  of  those  needs  on  the  part  of  the  creature 
in  whom  the  structure  appears,  than  I  can  believe  that 
the  form  of  the  dray-horse  or  greyhound — so  well 
adapted  both  to  the  needs  of  the  animal  in  his  daily 
service  to  man,  and  to  the  desires  of  man,  that  the 
creature  should  do  him  this  daily  service — can  have 
arisen  without  any  desire  on  man's  part  to  produce  this 
particular  structure,  or  without  the  inherited  habit  of 


248  LIFE  AND  HABIT. 

performing  the  corresponding  actions  for  man,  on  the 
part  of  the  greyhound  and  dray-horse. 

And  I  believe  that  this  will  be  felt  as  reasonable  by 
the  great  majority  of  my  readers.  I  believe  that  nine 
fairly  intelligent  and  observant  men  out  of  ten,  if  they 
were  asked  which  they  thought  most  likely  to  have 
been  the  main  cause  of  the  development  of  the  various 
phases  either  of  structure  or  instinct  which  we  see 
around  us,  namely — sense  of  need,  or  even  whim,  and 
hence  occasional  discovery,  helped  by  an  occasional 
piece  of  good  luck,  communicated,  it  may  be,  and  gene- 
rally adopted,  long  practised,  remembered  by  offspring, 
modified  by  changed  surroundings,  and  accumulated  in 
the  course  of  time — or,  the  accumulation  of  small 
divergent,  indefinite,  and  perfectly  unintelligent  varia- 
tions, preserved  through  the  survival  of  their  possessor  in 
the  struggle  for  existence,  and  hence  in  time  leading  to 
wide  differences  from  the  original  type — would  answer 
in  favour  of  the  former  alternative ;  and  if  for  no  other 
cause  yet  for  this — that  in  the  human  race,  which  we 
are  best  able  to  watch,  and  between  which  and  the 
lower  animals  no  difference  in  kind  will,  I  think,  be  sup- 
posed, but  only  in  degree,  we  observe  that  progress  must 
have  an  internal  current  setting  in  a  definite  direction, 
but  whither  we  know  not  for  very  long  beforehand; 
and  that  without  such  internal  current  there  is  stagna- 
tion. Our  own  progress — or  variation — is  due  not  to 
small,  fortuitous  inventions  or  modifications  which  have 
enabled  their  fortunate  possessors  to  survive  in  times 
of  difficulty,  not,  in  fact,  to  strokes  of  luck  (though 
these,  of  course,  have  had  some  effect — but  not  more, 


INSTINCTS  OF  NEUTER  INSECTS.  249 

probably,  than  strokes  of  ill  luck  have  counteracted) 
but  to  strokes  of  cunning — to  a  sense  of  need,  and  to 
study  of  the  past  and  present  which  have  given  shrewd 
people  a  key  with  which  to  unlock  the  chambers  of 
the  future. 

Further,  Mr.  Darwin  himself  says  ("Plants  and 
Animals  under -Domestication,"  ii.  p.  237,  ed.  1875)  : — 

"But  I  think  we  must  take  a  broader  view  and 
conclude  that  organic  beings  when  subjected  during 
several  generations  to  any  change  whatever  in  their 
conditions  tend  to  vary :  tlie  kind  of  variation  which 
ensues  depending  in  most  cases  in  afar  higher  degree  on 
the  nature  or  constitution  of  the  being,  than  on  the  nature 
of  the  changed  conditions."  And  this  we  observe  in  man. 
The  history  of  a  man  prior  to  his  birth  is  more  im- 
portant as  far  as  his  success  or  failure  goes  than  his 
surroundings  after  birth,  important  though  these  may 
indeed  be.  The  able  man  rises  in  spite  of  a  thousand 
hindrances,  the  fool  fails  in  spite  of  every  advantage. 
'  Natural  selection,"  however,  does  not  make  either  the 
able  man  or  the  fool.  It  only  deals  with  him  after 
other  causes  have  made  him,  and  would  seem  in  the 
end  to  amount  to  little  more  than  to  a  statement  of  the 
fact  that  when  variations  have  arisen  they  will  accumu- 
late. One  cannot  look,  as  has  already  been  said,  for 
the  origin  of  species  in  that  part  of  the  course  of  nature 
which  settles  the  preservation  or  extinction  of  variations 
which  have  already  arisen  from  some  unknown  cause, 
but  one  must  look  for  it  in  the  causes  that  have 
led  to  variation  at  all.  These  causes  must  get,  as  it 
were,  behind  the  back  of  "natural  selection,"  which  13 


250  LITE  AND  HABIT. 

rather  a  shield  and  hindrance  to  our  perception  of  our 
own  ignorance  than  an  explanation  of  what  these  causes 
are. 

The  remarks  made  above  will  apply  equally  to  plants 
such  as  the  misletoe  and  red  clover.  For  the  sake  of 
brevity  I  will  deal  only  with  the  misletoe,  which  seems 
to  be  the  more  striking  case.  Mr.  Darwin  writes : — 

"  Naturalists  continually  refer  to  external  conditions, 
such  as  climate,  food,  &c.,  as  the  only  possible  cause  of 
variation.  In  one  limited  sense,  as  we  shall  hereafter 
see,  this  may  be  true ;  but  it  is  preposterous  to  attribute 
to  mere  external  conditions,  the  structure,  for  instance, 
of  the  woodpecker,  with  its  feet,  tail,  beak,  and  tongue, 
so  admirably  adapted  to  catch  insects  under  the  bark  of 
trees.  In  the  case  of  the  misletoe,  which  draws  its 
nourishment  from  certain  trees,  which  has  seeds  that 
must  be  transported  by  certain  birds,  and  which  has 
flowers  with  separate  sexes  absolutely  requiring  the 
agency  of  certain  insects  to  bring  pollen  from  one 
flower  to  another,  it  is  equally  preposterous  to  account 
for  the  structure  of  this  parasite  with  its  relations  to 
several  distinct  organic  beings,  by  the  effect  of  external 
conditions,  or  of  habit,  or  of  the  volition  of  the  plant 
itself"  ("Natural  Selection,"  p.  3,  ed.  1876). 

I  cannot  see  this.  To  me  it  seems  still  more  prepos- 
terous to  account  for  it  by  the  action  of  "  natural  selec- 
tion" operating  upon  indefinite  variations.  It  would 
be  preposterous  to  suppose  that  a  bird  very  different 
from  a  woodpecker  should  have  had  a  conception  of  a 
woodpecker,  and  so  by  volition  gradually  grown  towards 
it.  So  in  like  manner  with  the  misletoe.  Neither  plant 


INSTINCTS  OF  NEUTER  INSECTS.  251 

nor  bird  knew  how  far  they  were  going,  or  saw  more  than 
a  very  little  ahead  as  to  the  means  of  remedying  this  or 
that  with  which  they  were  dissatisfied,  or  of  getting 
this  or  that  which  they  desired ;  but  given  perceptions 
at  all,  and  thus  a  sense  of  needs  and  of  the  gratification 
of  those  needs,  and  thus  hope  and  fear,  and  a  sense  of 
content  and  discontent — given  also  the  lowest  power  of 
gratifying  those  needs— given  also  that  some  individuals 
have  these  powers  in  a  higher  degree  than  others — given 
also  continued  personality  and  memory  over  a  vast 
extent  of  time — and  the  whole  phenomena  of  species 
and  genera  resolve  themselves  into  an  illustration  of  the 
old  proverb,  that  what  is  one  man's  meat  is  another 
man's  poison.  Life  in  its  lowest  form  under  the  above 
conditions — and  we  cannot  conceive  of  life  at  all  without 
them — would  be  bound  to  vary,  and  to  result  after 
not  so  very  many  millions  of  years  in  the  infinite  forms 
and  instincts  which  we  see  around  us. 


(   252) 


CHAPTER  XIII. 

LAMAKCK   AND   MR.   DARWIN. 

IT  will  have  been  seen  that  in  the  preceding  pages 
the  theory  of  evolution,  as  originally  propounded  by 
Lamarck,  has  been  more  than  once  supported,  as  against 
the  later  theory  concerning  it  put  forward  by  Mr.  Dar- 
win, and  now  generally  accepted. 

It  is  not  possible  for  me,  within  the  limits  at  my 
command,  to  do  anything  like  justice  to  the  argu- 
ments that  may  be  brought  forward  in  favour  of  either 
of  these  two  theories.  Mr.  Darwin's  books  are  at  the 
command  of  every  one;  and  so  much  has  been  dis- 
covered since  Lamarck's  day,  that  if  he  were  living 
now,  he  would  probably  state  his  case  very  differently ; 
I  shall  therefore  content  myself  with  a  few  brief  re- 
marks, which  will  hardly,  however,  aspire  to  the  dignity 
of  argument. 

According  to  Mr.  Darwin,  differentiations  of  struc- 
ture and  instinct  have  mainly  come  about  through  the 
accumulation  of  small,  fortuitous  variations  without 
intelligence  or  desire  upon  the  part  of  the  creature 
vaiying;  modification,  however,  through  desire  and 
sense  of  need,  is  not  denied  entirely,  inasmuch  as  con- 


LAMARCK  AND  MR.  DARWIN.  253 

siderable  effect  is  ascribed  by  Mr.  Darwin  to  use  and 
disuse,  which  involves,  as  has  been  already  said,  the 
modification  of  a  structure  in  accordance  with  the 
wishes  of  its  possessor. 

According  to  Lamarck,  genera  and  species  have  been 
evolved,  in  the  main,  by  exactly  the  same  process  as 
that  by  which  human  inventions  and  civilisations  are 
now  progressing;  and  this  involves  that  intelligence, 
ingenuity,  heroism,  and  all  the  elements  of  romance, 
should  have  had  the  main  share  in  the  development 
of  every  herb  and  living  creature  around  us. 

I  take  the  following  brief  outline  of  the  most  im- 
portant part  of  Lamarck's  theory  from  vol.  xxxvi.  of  the 
Naturalist's  Library  (Edinburgh,  1843) : — 

"The  more  simple  bodies,"  says  the  editor,  giving 
Lamarck's  opinion  without  endorsing  it,  "  are  easily 
formed,  and  this  being  the  case,  it  is  easy  to  conceive 
how  in  the  lapse  of  time  animals  of  a  more  complex 
structure  should  be  produced,  for  it  must  be  admitted  as 
a  fundamental  law,  that  the  production  of  anew  organ  in 
an  animal  body  results  from  any  new  want  or  desire  it 
may  experience.  The  first  effort  of  a  being  just  begin- 
ning to  develop  itself  must  be  to  procure  subsistence, 
and  hence  in  time  there  comes  to  be  produced  a 
stomach  or  alimentary  cavity."  (Thus  we  saw  that  the 
amoeba  is  in  the  habit  of  "  extemporising "  a  stomach 
when  it  wants  one.)  "Other  wants  occasioned  by 
circumstances  will  lead  to  other  efforts,  which  in  their 
turn  will  generate  new  organs." 

Lamarck's  wonderful  conception  was  hampered  by 
an  unnecessary  adjunct,  namely,  a  belief  in  an  inherent 


254  LIFE  AND  HABIT. 

tendency  towards  progressive  development  in  every 
low  organism.  He  was  thus  driven  to  account  for  the 
presence  of  many  very  low  and  very  ancient  organisms 
at  the  present  day,  and  fell  back  upon  the  theory,  which 
is  not  yet  supported  by  evidence,  that  such  low  forms 
are  still  continually  coming  into  existence  from  inorganic 
matter.  But  there  seems  no  necessity  to  suppose  that 
all  low  forms  should  possess  an  inherent  tendency 
towards  progression.  It  would  be  enough  that  there 
should  occasionally  arise  somewhat  more  gifted  speci- 
mens of  one  or  more  original  forms.  These  would 
vary,  and  the  ball  would  be  thus  set  rolling,  while 
the  less  gifted  would  remain  in  statu  quo,  provided 
they  were  sufficiently  gifted  to  escape  extinction. 

Nor  do  I  gather  that  Lamarck  insisted  on  continued 
personality  and  memory  so  as  to  account  for  heredity  at 
all,  and  so  as  to  see  life  as  a  single,  or  as  at  any  rate, 
only  a  few,  vast  compound  animals,  but  without  the 
connecting  organism  between  each  component  item  in 
the  whole  creature,  which  is  found  in  animals  that  are 
strictly  called  compound.  Until  continued  personality 
and  memory  are  connected  with  the  idea  of  heredity, 
heredity  of  any  kind  is  little  more  than  a  term  for  some- 
thing which  one  does  not  understand.  But  there  seems 
little  a  priori  difficulty  as  regards  Lamarck's  main  idea, 
now  that  Mr.  Darwin  has  familiarised  us  with  evolu- 
tion, and  made  us  feel  what  a  vast  array  of  facts  can 
be  brought  forward  in  support  of  it. 

Mr.  Darwin  tells  us,  in  the  preface  to  his  last  edition 
of  the  "  Origin  of  Species,"  that  Lamarck  was  partly 
led  to  his  conclusions  by  the  analogy  of  domestic  pro- 


LAMARCK  AND  MR.  DARWIN.  255 

ductions.  It  is  rather  hard  to  say  what  these  words 
imply;  they  may  mean  anything  from  a  baby  to  an 
apple  dumpling,  but  if  they  imply  that  Lamarck  drew 
inspirations  from  the  gradual  development  of  the 
mechanical  inventions  of  man,  and  from  the  progress 
of  man's  ideas,  I  would  say  that  of  all  sources  this 
would  seem  to  be  the  safest  and  most  fertile  from 
which  to  draw. 

Plants  and  animals  under  domestication  are  indeed 
a  suggestive  field  for  study,  but  machines  are  the 
manner  in  which  man  is  varying  at  this  moment.  We 
know  how  our  own  minds  work,  and  how  our  mechani- 
cal organisations — for,  in  all  sober  seriousness,  this  is 
what  it  comes  to — have  progressed  hand  in  hand  with 
our  desires;  sometimes  the  power  a  little  ahead,  and 
sometimes  the  desire;  sometimes  both  combining  to 
form  an  organ  with  almost  infinite  capacity  for  varia- 
tion, and  sometimes  comparatively  early  reaching  the 
limit  of  utmost  development  in  respect  of  any  new 
conception,  and  accordingly  coming  to  a  full  stop ; 
sometimes  making  leaps  and  bounds,  and  sometimes 
advancing  sluggishly.  Here  we  are  behind  the  scenes, 
and  can  see  how  the  whole  thing  works.  We  have 
man,  the  very  animal  which  we  can  best  understand, 
caught  in  the  very  act  of  variation,  through  his  own 
needs,  and  not  through  the  needs  of  others ;  the  whole 
process  is  a  natural  one ;  the  varying  of  a  creature  as 
much  in  a  wild  state  as  the  ants  and  butterflies  are 
wild.  There  is  less  occasion  here  for  the  continual 
"  might  be  "  and  "  may  be,"  which  we  are  compelled  to 
put  up  with  when  dealing  with  plants  and  animals,  of  the 


256  LIFE  AND  HABIT. 

workings  of  whose  minds  we  can  only  obscurely  judge. 
Also,  there  is  more  prospect  of  pecuniary  profit  attaching 
to  the  careful  study  of  machinery  than  can  be  generally 
hoped  for  from  the  study  of  the  lower  animals ;  and 
though  I  admit  that  this  consideration  should  not  be 
carried  too  far,  a  great  deal  of  very  unnecessary  suffer- 
ing will  be  spared  to  the  lower  animals ;  for  much  that 
passes  for  natural  history  is  little  better  than  prying 
into  other  people's  business,  from  no  other  motive  than 
curiosity.  I  would,  therefore,  strongly  advise  the 
reader  to  use  man,  and  the  present  races  of  man,  and 
the  growing  inventions  and  conceptions  of  man,  as  his 
guide,  if  he  would  seek  to  form  an  independent  judge- 
ment on  the  development  of  organic  life.  For  all 
growth  is  only  somebody  making  something. 

Lamarck's  theories  fell  into  disrepute,  partly  because 
they  were  too  startling  to  be  capable  of  ready  fusion 
with  existing  ideas ;  they  were,  in  fact,  too  wide  a  cross 
for  fertility ;  partly  because  they  fell  upon  evil  times, 
during  the  reaction  that  followed  the  French  Revolu- 
tion; partly  because,  unless  I  am  mistaken,  he  did  not 
sufficiently  link  on  the  experience  of  the  race  to  that 
of  the  individual,  nor  perceive  the  importance  of  the 
principle  that  consciousness,  memory,  volition,  intelli- 
gence, &c.,  vanish,  or  become  latent,  on  becoming 
intense.  He  also  appears  to  have  mixed  up  matter 
with  his  system,  which  was  either  plainly  wrong,  or  so 
incapable  of  proof  as  to  enable  people  to  laugh  at  him, 
and  pooh-pooh  him ;  but  I  believe  it  will  come  to  be 
perceived,  that  he  has  received  somewhat  scant  justice 
at  the  hands  of  his  successors,  and  that  his  "crude 


LAMARCK  AND  MR.  DARWIN.  257 

theories,"  as  they  have  been  somewhat  cheaply  called, 
are  far  from  having  had  their  last  say. 

Returning  to  Mr.  Darwin,  we  find,  as  we  have  already 
seen,  that  it  is  hard  to  say  exactly  how  much  Mr.  Darwin 
differs  from  Lamarck,  and  how  much  he  agrees  with  him. 
Mr.  Darwin  has  always  maintained  that  use  and  disuse 
are  highly  important,  and  this  implies  that  the  effect 
produced  on  the  parent  should  be  remembered  by  the 
offspring,  in  the  same  way  as  the  memory  of  a  wound 
is  transmitted  by  one  set  of  cells  to  succeeding  ones, 
who  long  repeat  the  scar,  though  it  may  fade  finally 
away.  Also,  after  dealing  with  the  manner  in  which 
one  eye  of  a  young  flat-fish  travels  round  the  head  till 
both  eyes  are  on  the  same  side  of  the  fish,  he  gives 
("  Natural  Selection,"  p.  188,  ed.  1875)  an  instance  of  a 
structure  "  which  apparently  owes  its  origin  exclusively 
to  use  or  habit."  He  refers  to  the  tail  of  some  American 
monkeys  "which  has  been  converted  into  a  wonder- 
fully perfect  prehensile  organ,  and  serves  as  a  fifth 
hand.  A  reviewer,"  he  continues,  ....  "remarks 
on  this  structure — '  It  is  impossible  to  believe  that  in 
any  number  of  ages  the  first  slight  incipient  tendency 
to  grasp,  could  preserve  the  lives  of  the  individuals  pos- 
sessing it,  or  favour  their  chance  of  having  and  of  rearing 
offspring.'  But  there  is  no  necessity  for  any  such  belief. 
Habit,  and  this  almost  implies  that  some  benefit,  great 
or  small,  is  thus  derived,  would  in  all  probability  suffice 
for  the  work."  If,  then,  habit  can  do  this — and  it  is  no 
small  thing  to  develop  a  wonderfully  perfect  prehensile 
organ  which  can  serve  as  a  fifth  hand — how  much  more 
may  not  habit  do,  even  though  unaided,  as  Mr.  Darwin 


258  LIFE  AND  HABIT. 

supposes  to  have  been  the  case  in  this  instance,  by 
"  natural  selection  "  ?  After  attributing  many  of  the 
structural  and  instinctive  differences  of  plants  and 
animals  to  the  effects  of  use — as  we  may  plainly  do 
with  Mr.  Darwin's  own  consent — after  attributing  a 
good  deal  more  to  unknown  causes,  and  a  good  deal 
to  changed  conditions,  which  are  bound,  if  at  all  im- 
portant, to  result  either  in  sterility  or  variation — how 
much  of  the  work  of  originating  species  is  left  for 
natural  selection?  —  which,  as  Mr.  Darwin  admits 
("Natural  Selection,"  p.  63,  ed.  1876),  does  not  induce, 
variability,  but  "  implies  only  the  preservation  of  such 
variations  as  arise,  and  are  beneficial  to  the  being  under 
its  conditions  of  life?"  An  important  part  assuredly, 
and  one  which  we  can  never  sufficiently  thank  Mr. 
Darwin  for  having  put  so  forcibly  before  us,  but  an 
indirect  part  only,  like  the  part  played  by  time  and 
space,  and  not,  I  think,  the  one  which  Mr.  Darwin 
would  assign  to  it. 

Mr.  Darwin  himself  has  admitted  that  in  the 
earlier  editions  of  his  "  Origin  of  Species  "  he  "  under- 
rated, as  it  now  seems  probable,  the  frequency  and 
importance  of  modifications  due  to  spontaneous  vari- 
ability." And  this  involves  the  having  over-rated  the 
action  of  "  natural  selection  "  as  an  agent  in  the  evolution 
of  species.  But  one  gathers  that  he  still  believes  the 
accumulation  of  small  and  fortuitous  variations  through 
the  agency  of  "  natural  selection  "  to  be  the  main  cause 
of  the  present  divergencies  of  structure  and  instinct.  I 
do  not,  however,  think  that  Mr.  Darwin  is  clear  about 
his  own  meaning.  I  think  the  prominence  given  to 


LAMARCK  AND  MR.  DARWIN.  259 

"  natural  selection  "  in  connection  with  the  "  origin  of 
species  "  has  led  him,  in  spite  of  himself,  and  in  spite 
of  his  being  on  his  guard  (as  is  clearly  shown  by  the 
paragraph  on  page  63  "Natural  Selection,"  above  re- 
ferred to),  to  regard  "  natural  selection "  as  in  some 
way  accounting  for  variation,  just  as  the  use  of  the 
dangerous  word  "  spontaneous," — though  he  is  so  often 
on  his  guard  against  it,  and  so  frequently  prefaces  it 
with  the  words  "  so-called," — would  seem  to  have  led 
him  into  very  serious  confusion  of  thought  in  the  pas- 
sage quoted  at  the  beginning  of  this  paragraph. 

For  after  saying  that  he  had  under-rated  "  the  fre- 
quency and  importance  of  modifications  due  to  spon- 
taneous variability,"  he  continues,  "  but  it  is  impossible 
to  attribute  to  this  cause  the  innumerable  structures 
which  are  so  well  adapted  to  the  habits  of  life  of  each 
species."  That  is  to  say,  it  is  impossible  to  attribute 
these  innumerable  structures  to  spontaneous  variability. 

What  is  spontaneous  variability  ? 

Clearly,  from  his  preceding  paragraph,  Mr.  Darwin 
means  only  "so-called  spontaneous  variations,"  such  as 
"  the  appearance  of  a  moss-rose  on  a  common  rose,  or 
of  a  nectarine  on  a  peach-tree,"  which  he  gives  as  good 
examples  of  so-called  spontaneous  variation. 

And  these  variations  are,  after  all,  due  to  causes,  but 
to  unknown  causes;  spontaneous  variation  being,  in 
fact,  but  another  name  for  variation  due  to  causes 
which  we  know  nothing  about,  but  in  no  possible  sense 
a  cause  of  mriatio?i.  So  that  when  we  come  to  put 
clearly  before  our  minds  exactly  what  the  sentence  we 
are  considering  amounts  to,  it  comes  to  this :  that  it  is 


26o  LIFE  AND  HABIT. 

impossible  to  attribute  the  innumerable  structures  which 
are  so  well  adapted  to  the  habits  of  life  of  each  species 
to  unknown  causes. 

"  I  can  no  more  believe  in  this,"  continues  Mr.  Dar- 
win, "  than  that  the  well-adapted  form  of  a  race-horse 
or  greyhound,  which,  before  the  principle  of  selection 
by  man  was  well  understood,  excited  so  much  surprise 
in  the  minds  of  the  older  naturalists,  can  thus  be  ex- 
plained" ("Natural  Selection,"  p.  171,  ed.  1876). 

Or,  in  other  words,  "  I  can  no  more  believe  that  the 
well- adapted  structures  of  species  are  due  to  unknown 
causes,  than  I  can  believe  that  the  well-adapted  form 
of  a  race-horse  can  be  explained  by  being  attributed  to 
unknown  causes." 

I  have  puzzled  over  this  paragraph  for  several  hours 
with  the  sincerest  desire  to  get  at  the  precise  idea  which 
underlies  it,  but  the  more  I  have  studied  it  the  more 
convinced  I  am  that  it  does  not  contain,  or  at  any  rate 
convey,  any  clear  or  definite  idea  at  all.  If  I  thought 
it  was  a  mere  slip,  I  should  not  call  attention  to  it ;  this 
book  will  probably  have  slips  enough  of  its  own  with- 
out introducing  those  of  a  great  man  unnecessarily ;  but 
I  submit  that  it  is  necessary  to  call  attention  to  it  here, 
inasmuch  as  it  is  impossible  to  believe  that  after  years 
of  reflection  upon  his  subject,  Mr.  Darwin  should  have 
written  as  above,  especially  in  such  a  place,  if  his  mind 
was  really  clear  about  his  own  position.  Immediately 
after  the  admission  of  a  certain  amount  of  miscalcula- 
tion, there  comes  a  more  or  less  exculpatory  sentence 
which  sounds  so  right  that  ninety-nine  people  out  of  a 
hundred  would  walk  througli  it,  unless  led  by  some 


LAMARCK  AND  MR.  DARWIN.  261 

exigency  of  their  own  position  to  examine  it  closely 
but  which  yet  upon  examination  proves  to  be  as  nearly 
meaningless  as  a  sentence  can  be. 

The  weak  point  in  Mr.  Darwin's  theory  would  seem 
to  be  a  deficiency,  so  to  speak,  of  motive  power  to  origi- 
nate and  direct  the  variations  which  time  is  to  accumu- 
late. It  deals  admirably  with  the  accumulation  of 
variations  in  creatures  already  varying,  but  it  does  not 
provide  a  sufficient  number  of  sufficiently  important 
variations  to  be  accumulated.  Given  the  motive  power 
which  Lamarck  suggested,  and  Mr.  Darwin's  mechan- 
ism would  appear  (with  the  help  of  memory,  as  bearing 
upon  reproduction,  of  continued  personality,  and  hence 
of  inherited  habit,  and  of  the  vanishing  tendency  of  con- 
sciousness) to  work  with  perfect  ease.  Mr.  Darwin  has 
made  us  all  feel  that  in  some  way  or  other  variations 
are  accumulated,  and  that  evolution  is  the  true  solution 
of  the  present  widely  different  structures  around  us, 
whereas,  before  he  wrote,  hardly  any  one  believed  this. 
However  we  may  differ  from  him  in  detail,  the  present 
general  acceptance  of  evolution  must  remain  as  his 
work,  and  a  more  valuable  work  can  hardly  be  imagined. 
Nevertheless,  I  cannot  think  that  "natural  selection," 
working  upon  small,  fortuitous,  indefinite,  unintelligent 
variations,  would  produce  the  results  we  see  around  us. 
One  wants  something  that  will  give  a  more  definite  aim 
to  variations,  and  hence,  at  times,  cause  bolder  leaps  in 
advance.  One  cannot  but  doubt  whether  so  many 
plants  and  animals  would  be  being  so  continually  saved 
"by  the  skin  of  their  teeth,"  as  must  be  so  saved  if 
the  variations  from  which  genera  ultimately  arise  are  as 


262  LIFE  AND  HABIT. 

small  in  their  commencement  and  at  each  successive 
stage  as  Mr.  Darwin  seems  to  believe.  God — to  use 
the  language  of  the  Bible — is  not  extreme  to  mark 
what  is  done  amiss,  whether  with  plant  or  beast  or 
man ;  on  the  other  hand,  when  towers  of  Siloam  fall, 
they  fall  on  the  just  as  well  as  the  unjust. 

One  feels,  on  considering  Mr.  Darwin's  position,  that 
if  it  be  admitted  that  there  is  in  the  lowest  creature  a 
power  to  vary,  no  matter  how  small,  one  has  got  in  this 
power  as  near  the  "  origin  of  species "  as  one  can  ever 
hope  to  get.  For  no  one  professes  to  account  for  the 
origin  of  life ;  but  if  a  creature  with  a  power  to  vary 
reproduces  itself  at  all,  it  must  reproduce  another  crea- 
ture which  shall  also  have  tlie  power  to  vary ;  so  that, 
given  time  and  space  enough,  there  is  no  knowing  where 
such  a  creature  could  or  would  stop. 

If  the  primordial  cell  had  been  only  capable  of  repro- 
ducing itself  once,  there  would  have  followed  a  single 
line  of  descendants,  the  chain  of  which  might  at  any 
moment  have  been  broken  by  casualty.  Doubtless  the 
millionth  repetition  would  have  differed  very  mate- 
rially from  the  original — as  widely,  perhaps,  as  we 
differ  from  the  primordial  cell ;  but  it  would  only  have 
differed  by  addition,  and  could  no  more  in  any  genera- 
tion resume  its  latest  development  without  having 
passed  through  the  initial  stage  of  being  what  its  first 
forefather  was,  and  doing  what  its  first  forefather  did, 
and  without  going  through  all  or  a  sufficient  number  of 
the  steps  whereby  it  had  reached  its  latest  differentia- 
tion, than  water  can  rise  above  its  own  level. 

The  very  idea,  then,  of  reproduction  involves,  unless 


LAMARCK  AND  MR.  DARWIN.  263 

I  am  mistaken,  that,  no  matter  how  much  the  creature 
reproducing  itself  may  gain  in  power  and  versatility,  it 
must  still  always  begin  with  itself  again  in  each  gene- 
ration. The  primordial  cell  being  capable  of  reproduc- 
ing itself  not  only  once,  but  many  times  over,  each  of 
the  creatures  which  it  produces  must  be  similarly  gifted ; 
hence  the  geometrical  ratio  of  increase  and  the  existing 
divergence  of  type.  In  each  generation  it  will  pass 
rapidly  and  unconsciously  through  all  the  earlier 
stages  of  which  there  has  been  infinite  experience, 
and  for  which  the  conditions  are  reproduced  with 
sufficient  similarity  to  cause  no  failure  of  memory  or 
hesitation ;  but  in  each  generation,  when  it  comes  to 
the  part  in  which  the  course  is  not  so  clear,  it  will 
become  conscious ;  still,  however,  where  the  course  is 
plain,  as  in  breathing,  digesting,  &c.,  retaining  uncon- 
sciousness. Thus  organs  which  present  all  the  appear- 
ance of  being  designed— as,  for  example,  the  tip  for  its 
beak  prepared  by  the  embryo  chicken — would  be  pre- 
pared in  the  end,  as  it  were,  by  rote,  and  without  sense 
of  design,  though  none  the  less  owing  their  origin  to 


The  question  is  not  concerning  evolution,  but  as  to 
the  main  cause  which  has  led  to  evolution  in  such  and 
such  shapes.  To  me  it  seems  that  the  "  Origin  of  Varia- 
tion," whatever  it  is,  is  the  only  true  "  Origin  of  Species," 
and  that  this  must,  as  Lamarck  insisted,  be  looked  for 
in  the  needs  and  experiences  of  the  creatures  varying. 
Unless  we  can  explain  the  origin  of  variations,  we  are 
met  by  the  unexplained  at  every  step  in  the  progress  of 
a  creature  from  its  original  homogeneous  condition  to  its 
s 


264  LIFE  AND  HABIT. 

differentiation,  we  will  say,  as  an  elephant ;  so  that  to 
say  that  an  elephant  has  become  an  elephant  through 
the  accumulation  of  a  vast  number  of  small,  fortuitous, 
but  unexplained,  variations  in  some  lower  creatures,  is 
really  to  say  that  it  has  become  an  elephant  owing  to 
a  series  of  causes  about  which  we  know  nothing  what- 
ever, or,  in  other  words,  that  one  does  not  know  how  it 
came  to  be  an  elephant.  But  to  say  that  an  elephant 
has  become  an  elephant  owing  to  a  series  of  variations, 
nine-tenths  of  which  were  caused  by  the  wishes  of  the 
creature  or  creatures  from  which  the  elephant  is  de- 
scended— this  is  to  offer  a  reason,  and  definitely  put 
the  insoluble  one  step  further  back.  The  question  will 
then  turn  upon  the  sufficiency  of  the  reason — that  is  to 
say,  whether  the  hypothesis  is  borne  out  by  facts. 

The  effects  of  competition  would,  of  course,  have  an 
extremely  important  effect  upon  any  creature,  in  the 
same  way  as  any  other  condition  of  nature  under  which  it 
lived,  must  affect  its  sense  of  need  and  its  opinions  gene- 
rally. The  results  of  competition  would  be,  as  it  were, 
the  decisions  of  an  arbiter  settling  the  question  whether 
such  and  such  variation  was  really  to  the  animal's  ad- 
vantage or  not — a  matter  on  which  the  animal  will,  on 
the  whole,  have  formed  a  pretty  fair  judgement  for 
itself.  Undoubtedly  the  past  decisions  of  such  an  arbiter 
would  affect  the  conduct  of  the  creature,  which  would 
have  doubtless  had  its  shortcomings  and  blunders,  and 
would  amend  them.  The  creature  would  shape  its 
course  according  to  its  experience  of  the  common 
course  of  events,  but  it  would  be  continually  trying, 
and  often  successfully,  to  evade  the  law  by  all  manner 


LAMARCK  AND  MR.  DARWIN.  265 

of  sharp  practice.  New  precedents  would  thus  arise, 
so  that  the  law  would  shift  with  time  and  circum- 
stances; but  the  law  would  not  otherwise  direct  the 
channels  into  which  life  would  flow,  than  as  laws, 
whether  natural  or  artificial,  have  affected  the  de- 
velopment of  the  widely  differing  trades  and  profes- 
sions among  mankind.  These  have  had  their  origin 
rather  in  the  needs  and  experiences  of  mankind  than  in 
any  laws. 

To  put  much  the  same  as  the  above  in  different 
words.  Assume  that  small  favourable  variations  are 
preserved  more  commonly,  in  proportion  to  their  num- 
bers, than  is  perhaps  the  case,  and  assume  that  con- 
siderable variations  occur  more  rarely  than  they  pro- 
bably do  occur,  how  account  for  any  variation  at  all  ? 
"  Natural  selection  "  cannot  create  the  smallest  variation 
unless  it  acts  through  perception  of  its  mode  of  operation, 
recognised  inarticulately,  but  none  the  less  clearly,  by 
the  creature  varying.  "  Natural  selection  "  operates  on 
what  it  finds,  and  not  on  what  it  has  made.  Animals 
that  have  been  wise  and  lucky  live  longer  and  breed 
more  than  others  less  wise  and  lucky.  Assuredly.  The 
wise  and  lucky  animals  transmit  their  wisdom  and  luck. 
Assuredly.  They  add  to  their  powers,  and  diverge  into 
widely  different  directions.  Assuredly.  What  is  the 
cause  of  this  ?  Surely  the  fact  that  they  were  capable 
of  feeling  needs,  and  that  they  differed  in  their  needs  and 
manner  of  gratifying  them,  and  that  they  continued 
to  live  in  successive  generations,  rather  than  the  fact 
that  when  lucky  and  wise  they  thrived  and  bred  more 
descendants.  This  last  is  an  accessory  hardly  less  im- 


266  LIFE  AND  HABIT. 

portant  for  the  development  of  species  than  the  fact 
of  the  continuation  of  life  at  all ;  but  it  is  an  accessory 
of  much  the  same  kind  as  this,  for  if  animals  continue 
to  live  at  all,  they  must  live  in  some  way,  and  will  find 
that  there  are  good  ways  and  bad  ways  of  living.  An 
animal  which  discovers  the  good  way  will  gradually 
develop  further  powers,  and  so  species  will  get  further 
and  further  apart ;  but  the  origin  of  this  is  to  be  looked 
for,  not  in  the  power  which  decides  whether  this  or  that 
way  was  good,  but  in  the  cause  which  determines  the 
creature,  consciously  or  unconsciously,  to  try  this  or 
that  way. 

But  Mr.  Darwin  might  say  that  this  is  not  a  fair 
way  of  stating  the  issue.  He  might  say,  "  You  beg  the 
question;  you  assume  that  there  is  an  inherent  ten- 
dency in  animals  towards  progressive  development, 
whereas  I  say  that  there  is  no  good  evidence  of  any 
such  tendency.  I  maintain  that  the  differences  that 
have  from  time  to  time  arisen  have  come  about  mainly 
from  causes  so  far  beyond  our  ken,  that  we  can  only 
call  them  spontaneous ;  and  if  so,  natural  selection  which 
you  must  allow  to  have  at  any  rate  played  an  important 
part  in  the  accumulation  of  variations,  must  also  be 
allowed  to  be  the  nearest  thing  to  the  cause  of  Specific 
differences,  which  we  are  able  to  arrive  at." 

Thus  he  writes  ("Natural  Selection,"  p.  176,  ed. 
1876):  "Although  we  have  no  good  evidence  of  the 
existence  in  organic  beings  of  a  tendency  towards  pro- 
gressive development,  yet  this  necessarily  follows,  as  I 
have  attempted  to  show  in  the  fourth  chapter,  through 
the  continued  action  of  natural  selection."  Mr.  Darwin 


LAMARCK  AND  MR.  DARWIN.  267 

does  not  say  that  organic  beings  have  no  tendency  to 
vary  at  all,  but  only  that  there  is  no  good  evidence  that 
they  have  a  tendency  to  progressive  development,  which, 
I  take  it,  means,  to  see  an  ideal  a  long  way  off,  and  very 
different  to  their  present  selves,  which  ideal  they  think 
will  suit  them,  and  towards  which  they  accordingly  make. 
I  would  admit  this  as  contrary  to  all  experience.  I 
doubt  whether  plants  and  animals  have  any  innate 
tendency  to  vary  at  all,  being  led  to  question  this  by 
gathering  from  "Plants  and  Animals  under  Domes- 
tication "  that  this  is  Mr.  Darwin's  own  opinion.  I  am 
inclined  rather  to  think  that  they  have  only  an  innate 
power  to  vary  slightly,  in  accordance  with  changed  con- 
ditions, and  an  innate  capability  of  being  affected  both  in 
structure  and  instinct,  by  causes  similar  to  those  which 
we  observe  to  affect  ourselves.  But  however  this  may 
be,  they  do  vary  somewhat,  and  unless  they  did,  they 
would  not  in  time  have  come  to  be  so  widely  different 
from  each  other  as  they  now  are.  The  question  is  as  to 
the  origin  and  character  of  these  variations. 

We  say  they  mainly  originate  in  a  creature  through 
a  sense  of  its  needs,  and  vary  through  the  varying  sur- 
roundings which  will  cause  those  needs  to  vary,  and 
through  the  opening  up  of  new  desires  in  many  crea- 
tures, as  the  consequence  of  the  gratification  of  old 
ones ;  they  depend  greatly  on  differences  of  individual 
capacity  and  temperament;  they  are  communicated, 
and  in  the  course  of  time  transmitted,  as  what  we  call 
hereditary  habits  or  structures,  though  these  are  only,  in 
truth,  intense  and  epitomised  memories  of  how  certain 
creatures  liked  to  deal  with  protoplasm.  The  question 


268  LIFE  AND  HABIT. 

•whether  this  or  that  is  really  good  or  ill,  is  settled,  as 
the  proof  of  the  pudding  by  the  eating  thereof,  i.e., 
by  the  rigorous  competitive  examinations  through 
which  most  living  organisms  must  pass.  Mr.  Darwin 
says  that  there  is  no  good  evidence  in  support  of  any 
great  principle,  or  tendency  on  the  part  of  the  creature 
itself,  which  would  steer  variation,  as  it  were,  and  keep 
its  head  straight,  but  that  the  most  marvellous  adapta- 
tions of  structures  to  needs  are  simply  the  result  of 
small  and  blind  variations,  accumulated  by  the  opera- 
tion of  "natural  selection,"  which  is  thus  the  main 
cause  of  the  origin  of  species. 

Enough  has  perhaps  already  been  said  to  make  the 
reader  feel  that  the  question  wants  reopening;  I 
shall,  therefore,  here  only  remark  that  we  may  assume 
no  fundamental  difference  as  regards  intelligence,  me- 
mory, and  sense  of  needs  to  exist  between  man  and  the 
lowest  animals,  and  that  in  man  we  do  distinctly  see  a 
tendency  towards  progressive  development,  operating 
through  his  power  of  profiting  by  and  transmitting  his 
experience,  but  operating  in  directions  which  man  can- 
not foresee  for  any  long  distance.  We  also  see  this  in 
many  of  the  higher  animals  under  domestication,  as 
with  horses  which  have  learnt  to  canter  and  dogs  which 
point ;  more  especially  we  observe  it  along  the  line  of 
latest  development,  where  equilibrium  of  settled  convic- 
tions has  not  yet  been  fully  attained.  One  neither  finds 
nor  expects  much  a  priori  knowledge,  whether  in  man 
or  beast ;  but  one  does  find  some  little  in  the  beginnings 
of,  and  throughout  the  development  of,  every  habit,  at 
the  commencement  of  which,  and  on  every  successive 


LAMARCK  AND  MR.  DARWIN.  269 

improvement  in  which,  deductive  and  inductive  methods 
are,  as  it  were,  fused.  Thus  the  effect,  where  we  can 
best  watch  its  causes,  seems  mainly  produced  by  a  desire 
for  a  definite  object — in  some  cases  a  serious  and  sensible 
desire,  in  others  an  idle  one,  in  others,  again,  a  mis- 
taken one ;  and  sometimes  by  a  blunder  which,  in  the 
hands  of  an  otherwise  able  creature,  has  turned  up 
trumps.  In  wild  animals  and  plants  the  divergences 
have  been  accumulated,  if  they  answered  to  the  pro- 
longed desires  of  the  creature  itself,  and  if  these  desires 
were  to  its  true  ultimate  good ;  with  plants  or  animals 
under  domestication  they  have  been  accumulated  if  they 
answered  a  little  to  the  original  wishes  of  the  creature, 
and  much,  to  the  wishes  of  man.  As  long  as  man  con- 
tinued to  like  them,  they  would  be  advantageous  to  the 
creature ;  when  he  tired  of  them,  they  would  be  disad- 
vantageous to  it,  and  would  accumulate  no  longer. 
Surely  the  results  produced  in  the  adaptation  of  struc- 
ture to  need  among  many  plants  and  insects  are  better 
accounted  for  on  this,  which  I  suppose  to  be  Lamarck's 
view,  namely,  by  supposing  that  what  goes  on  amongst 
ourselves  has  gone  on  amongst  all  creatures,  than  by 
supposing  that  these  adaptations  are  the  results  of  per- 
fectly blind  and  unintelligent  variations. 

Let  me  give  two  examples  of  such  adaptations,  taken 
from  Mr.  St.  George  Mivart's  "  Genesis  of  Species,"  to 
which  work  I  would  wish  particularly  to  call  the 
reader's  attention.  He  should  also  read  Mr.  Darwin's 
answers  to  Mr.  Mivart  (p.  176,  "Natural  Selection,"  ed. 
1876,  and  onwards). 

Mr.  Mivart  writes : — 


270  LIFE  AND  HABIT. 

"  Some  insects  which  imitate  leaves  extend  the  imi- 
tation even  to  the  very  injuries  on  those  leaves  made 
by  the  attacks  of  insects  or  fungi.  Thus  speaking  of 
the  walking-stick  insects,  Mr.  Wallace  says,  '  One  of 
these  creatures  obtained  by  myself  in  Borneo  (ceroxylus 
laceratus)  was  covered  over  with  foliaceous  excre- 
scences of  a  clear  olive  green  colour,  so  as  exactly 
to  resemble  a  stick  grown  over  by  a  creeping  moss 
or  jungermannia.  The  Dyak  who  brought  it  me  as- 
sured me  it  was  grown  over  with  moss,  though  alive, 
and  it  was  only  after  a  most  minute  examination  that  I 
could  convince  myself  it  was  not  so/  Again,  as  to  the 
leaf  butterfly,  he  says, '  We  come  to  a  still  more  extra- 
ordinary part  of  the  imitation,  for  we  find  represen- 
tations of  leaves  in  every  stage  of  decay,  variously 
blotched,  and  mildewed,  and  pierced  with  holes,  and  in 
many  cases  irregularly  covered  with  powdery  black 
dots,  gathered  into  patches  and  spots  so  closely  resem- 
bling the  various  kinds  of  minute  fungi  that  grow  on 
dead  leaves,  that  it  is  impossible  to  avoid  thinking  at 
first  sight  that  the  butterflies  themselves  have  been 
attacked  by  real  fungi.'  " 

I  can  no  more  believe  that  these  artificial  fungi  in 
which  the  moth  arrays  itself  are  due  to  the  accumulation 
of  minute,  perfectly  blind,  and  unintelligent  variations, 
than  I  can  believe  that  the  artificial  flowers  which  a 
woman  wears  in  her  hat  can  have  got  there  without 
design;  or  that  a  detective  puts  on  plain  clothes 
without  the  slightest  intention  of  making  his  victim 
think  that  he  is  not  a  policeman. 
Again  Mr.  Mivart  writes  : — 


LAMARCK  AND  MR.  DARWIN.  271 

"  In  the  work  just  referred  to  ('  The  Fertilisation  of 
Orchids '),  Mr.  Darwin  gives  a  series  of  the  most  won- 
derful and  minute  contrivances,  by  which  the  visits  of 
insects  are  utilised  for  the  fertilisation  of  orchids — 
structures  so  wonderful  that  nothing  could  well  be 
more  so,  except  the  attribution  of  their  origin  to  minute, 
fortuitous,  and  indefinite  variations. 

"The  instances  are  too  numerous  and  too  long  to 
quote,  but  in  his  '  Origin  of  Species '  he  describes  two 
which  must  not  be  passed  over.  In  one  (coryantlies) 
the  orchid  has  its  lower  lip  enlarged  into  a  bucket, 
above  which  stand  two  water-secreting  horns.  These 
latter  replenish  the  bucket,  from  which,  when  half- 
filled,  the  water  overflows  by  a  spout  on  one  side.  Bees 
visiting  the  flower  fall  into  the  bucket  and  crawl  out 
at  the  spout.  By  the  peculiar  arrangement  of  the  parts 
of  the  flower,  the  first  bee  which  does  so,  carries  away 
the  pollen  mass  glued  to  his  back,  and  then  when  he 
has  his  next  involuntary  bath  in  another  flower,  as  he 
orawls  out,  the  pollen  attached  to  him  comes  in  contact 
with  the  stigma  of  that  second  flower  and  fertilises  it. 
In  the  other  example  (catasetum),  when  a  bee  gnaws  a 
certain  part  of  the  flower,  he  inevitably  touches  a  long 
delicate  projection  wliich  Mr.  Darwin  calls  the '  antenna.' 
'This  antenna  transmits  a  vibration  to  a  membrane 
which  is  instantly  ruptured ;  this  sets  free  a  spring  by 
which  the  pollen  mass  is  shot  forth  like  an  arrow  in 
the  right  direction,  and  adheres  by  its  viscid  extremity 
to  the  back  of  the  bee ' "  ("  Genesis  of  Species,"  p.  63). 

No  one  can  tell  a  story  so  charmingly  as  Mr.  Darwin, 
but  I  can  no  more  believe  that  all  this  has  come  about 


272  LIFE  AND  HABIT. 

without  design  on  the  part  of  the  orchid,  and  a  gradual 
perception  of  the  advantages  it  is  able  to  take  over  the 
bee,  and  a  righteous  determination  to  enjoy  them,  than 
I  can  believe  that  a  mousetrap  or  a  steam-engine  is  the 
result  of  the  accumulation  of  blind  minute  fortuitous 
variations  in  a  creature  called  man,  which  creature  has 
never  wanted  either  mouse-traps  or  steam-engines,  but 
has  had  a  sort  of  promiscuous  tendency  to  make  them,  and 
was  benefited  by  making  them,  so  that  those  of  the  race 
who  had  a  tendency  to  make  them  survived  and  left 
issue,  which  issue  would  thus  naturally  tend  to  make 
more  mousetraps  and  more  steam-engines. 

Pursuing  this  idea  still  further,  can  we  for  a  moment 
believe  that  these  additions  to  our  limbs — for  this  is 
what  they  are — have  mainly  come  about  through  the 
occasional  birth  of  individuals,  who,  without  design  on 
their  own  parts,  nevertheless  made  them  better  or 
worse,  and  who,  accordingly,  either  survived  and  trans- 
mitted their  improvement,  or  perished,  they  and  their 
incapacity  together  ? 

When  I  can  believe  in  this,  then — and  not  till  then — 
can  I  believe  in  an  origin  of  species  which  does  not 
resolve  itself  mainly  into  sense  of  need,  faith,  intelli- 
gence, and  memory.  Then,  and  not  till  then,  can  I 
believe  that  such  organs  as  the  eye  and  ear  can  have 
arisen  in  any  other  way  than  as  the  result  of  that  kind 
of  mental  ingenuity,  and  of  moral  as  well  as  physical 
capacity,  without  which,  till  then,  I  should  have  con- 
sidered such  an  invention  as  the  steam-engine  to  be 
impossible. 


(273) 


CHAPTER  XIV. 

MR.   MIVART  AND   MR.   DARWIN. 

"  A  DISTINGUISHED  zoologist,  Mr.  St.  George  Mivart," 
writes  Mr.  Darwin,  "  has  recently  collected  all  the  ob- 
jections which  have  ever  been  advanced  by  myself  and 
others  against  the  theory  of  natural  selection,  as  pro- 
pounded by  Mr.  "Wallace  and  myself,  and  has  illustrated 
them  with  admirable  art  and  force  ("Natural  Selec- 
tion," p.  176,  ed.  1876).  I  have  already  referred  the 
reader  to  Mr.  Mivart's  work,  but  quote  the  above 
passage  as  showing  that  Mr.  Mivart  will  not,  probably, 
be  found  to  have  left  much  unsaid  that  would  appear  to 
make  against  Mr.  Darwin's  theory.  It  is  incumbent 
upon  me  both  to  see  how  far  Mr.  Mivart's  objections 
are  weighty  as  against  Mr.  Darwin,  and  also  whether  or 
not  they  tell  with  equal  force  against  the  view  wliich  I 
am  myself  advocating.  I  will  therefore  touch  briefly 
upon  the  most  important  of  them,  with  the  pur- 
pose of  showing  that  they  are  serious  as  against  the 
doctrine  that  small  fortuitous  variations  are  the  origin 
of  species,  but  that  they  have  no  force  against  evolution 
as  guided  by  intelligence  and  memory. 

But  before  doing  this,  I  would  demur  to  the  words 
used  by  Mr.  Darwin,  and  just  quoted  above,  namely, 


274  LIFE  AND  HABIT. 

"  the  theory  of  natural  selection."  I  imagine  that  I 
see  in  them  the  fallacy  which  I  believe  to  run  through 
almost  all  Mr.  Darwin's  work,  namely,  that  "natural 
selection"  is  a  theory  (if,  indeed,  it  can  be  a  theory 
at  all),  in  some  way  accounting  for  the  origin  of 
variation,  and  so  of  species — "  natural  selection,"  as  we 
have  already  seen,  being  unable  to  "  induce  variability," 
and  being  only  able  to  accumulate  what — on  the  occa- 
sion of  each  successive  variation,  and  so  during  the  whole 
process — must  have  been  originated  by  something  else. 

Again,  Mr.  Darwin  writes  —  "  In  considering  the 
origin  of  species  it  is  quite  conceivable  that  a  natu- 
ralist, reflecting  on  the  mutual  affinities  of  organic 
beings,  or  their  embryological  relations,  their  geogra- 
phical distribution,  geological  succession,  and  other  such 
facts,  might  come  to  the  conclusion  that  species  had  not 
been  independently  created,  but  had  descended,  like 
varieties  from  other  species.  Nevertheless,  such  a  con- 
clusion, even  if  well  founded,  would  be  unsatisfactory, 
until  it  could  be  shown  how  the  innumerable  species 
inhabiting  this  world  had  been  modified,  so  as  to  acquire 
that  perfection  of  structure  and  co-adaptation  which 
justly  excites  our  admiration  "  ("  Origin  of  Species,"  p. 
2,  ed.  1876). 

After  reading  the  above  we  feel  that  nothing  more 
satisfactory  could  be  desired.  We  are  sure  that  we  are 
in  the  hands  of  one  who  can  indeed  tell  us  "  how  the 
innumerable  species  inhabiting  this  world  have  been 
modified,"  and  we  are  no  less  sure  that  though  others 
may  have  written  upon  the  subject  before,  there  has 
been,  as  yet,  no  satisfactory  explanation  put  forward  of 


MR.  MIVART  AND  MR.  DARWIN.  275 

the  grand  principle  upon  which  modification  has  pro- 
ceeded. Then  follows  a  delightful  volume,  with  facts 
upon  facts  concerning  animals,  all  showing  that  species 
is  due  to  successive  small  modifications  accumulated 
in  the  course  of  nature.  But  one  cannot  suppose  that 
Lamarck  ever  doubted  this ;  for  he  can  never  have 
meant  to  say,  that  a  low  form  of  life  made  itself  into  an 
elephant  at  one  or  two  great  bounds ;  and  if  he  did  not 
mean  this,  he  must  have  meant  that  it  made  itself  into 
an  elephant  through  the  accumulation  of  small  succes- 
sive modifications;  these,  he  must  have  seen,  were 
capable  of  accumulation  in  the  scheme  of  nature,  though 
he  may  not  have  dwelt  on  the  manner  in  which  this  is 
accomplished,  inasmuch  as  it  is  obviously  a  matter  of 
secondary  importance  in  comparison  with  the  origin 
of  the  variations  themselves.  We  believe,  however, 
throughout  Mr.  Darwin's  book,  that  we  are  being  told 
what  we  expected  to  be  told ;  and  so  convinced  are  we, 
by  the  facts  adduced,  that  in  some  way  or  other  evolu- 
tion must  be  true,  and  so  grateful  are  we  for  being 
allowed  to  think  this,  that  we  put  down  the  volume 
without  perceiving  that,  whereas  Lamarck  did  adduce  a 
great  and  general  cause  of  variation,  the  insufficiency 
of  which,  in  spite  of  errors  of  detail,  has  yet  to  be 
shown,  Mr.  Darwin's  main  cause  of  variation  resolves 
itself  into  a  confession  of  ignorance. 

This,  however,  should  detract  but  little  from  our 
admiration  for  Mr.  Darwin's  achievement.  Any 
one  can  make  people  see  a  thing  if  he  puts  it  in  the 
right  way,  but  Mr.  Darwin  made  us  see  evolution,  in 
spite  of  his  having  put  it,  in  what  seems  to  not  a  few, 


276  LIFE  AND  HABIT. 

an  exceedingly  mistaken  way.  Yet  his  triumph  is  com- 
plete, for  no  matter  how  much  any  one  now  moves  the 
foundation,  he  cannot  shake  the  superstructure,  which 
has  become  so  currently  accepted  as  to  be  above  the 
need  of  any  support  from  reason,  and  to  be  as  difficult 
to  destroy  as  it  was  originally  difficult  of  construction. 
Less  than  twenty  years  ago,  we  never  met  with,  or 
heard  of,  any  one  who  accepted  evolution ;  we  did  not 
even  know  that  such  a  doctrine  had  been  ever  broached ; 
unless  it  was  that  some  one  now  and  again  said  that 
there  was  a  very  dreadful  book  going  about  like  a 
rampant  lion,  called  "  Vestiges  of  Creation,"  whereon 
we  said  that  we  would  on  no  account  read  it,  lest  it 
should  shake  our  faith ;  then  we  would  shake  our  heads 
and  talk  of  the  preposterous  folly  and  wickedness  of  such 
shallow  speculations.  Had  not  the  book  of  Genesis  been 
written  for  our  learning  ?  Yet,  now,  who  seriously  dis- 
putes the  main  principles  of  evolution  ?  I  cannot  believe 
that  there  is  a  bishop  on  the  bench  at  this  moment  who 
does  not  accept  them;  even  the  "  holy  priests  "  themselves 
bless  evolution  as  their  predecessors  blessed  Cleopatra 
— when  they  ought  not.  It  is  not  he  who  first  con- 
ceives an  idea,  nor  he  who  sets  it  on  its  legs  and  makes 
it  go  on  all  fours,  but  he  who  makes  other  people  accept 
the  main  conclusion,  whether  on  right  grounds  or  on 
wrong  ones,  who  has  done  the  greatest  work  as  regards 
the  promulgation  of  an  opinion.  And  this  is  what  Mr. 
Darwin  has  done  for  evolution.  He  has  made  us  think 
that  we  know  the  origin  of  species,  and  so  of  genera,  in 
spite  of  his  utmost  efforts  to  assure  us  that  we  know 
nothing  of  the  causes  from  which  the  vast  majority  of 


MR.  M IV ART  AND  MR.  DARWIN.  277 

modifications  have  arisen — that  is  to  say,  he  has  made 
us  think  we  know  the  whole  road,  though  he  has 
almost  ostentatiously  blindfolded  us  at  every  step  of 
the  journey.  But  to  the  end  of  time,  if  the  question  be 
asked,  "  Who  taught  people  to  believe  in  evolution  ? " 
there  can  only  be  one  answer— that  it  was  Mr.  Darwin. 


Mr.  Mivart  urges  with  much  force  the  difficulty  of 
starting  any  modification  on  which  "  natural  selection  " 
is  to  work,  and  of  getting  a  creature  to  vary  in  any  defi- 
nite direction.  Thus,  after  quoting  from  Mr.  Wallace 
some  of  the  wonderful  cases  of  "mimicry"  which  are  to 
be  found  among  insects,  he  writes : — 

"  Now,  let  us  suppose  that  the  ancestors  of  these  various 
animals  were  all  destitute  of  the  very  special  protection 
they  at  present  possess,  as  on  the  Darwinian  hypothesis 
we  must  do.  Let  it  be  also  conceded  that  small  devia- 
tions from  the  antecedent  colouring  or  form  would  tend 
to  make  some  of  their  ancestors  escape  destruction,  by 
causing  them  more  or  less  frequently  to  be  passed  over 
or  mistaken  by  their  persecutors.  Yet  the  deviation 
must,  as  the  event  has  shown,  in  each  case,  be  in  some 
definite  direction,  whether  it  be  towards  some  other 
animal  or  plant,  or  towards  some  dead  or  inorganic 
matter.  But  as,  according  to  Mr,  Darwin's  theory,  there 
is  a  constant  tendency  to  indefinite  variation,  and  as  the 
minute  incipient  variations  will  be  in  all  directions,  they 
must  tend  to  neutralise  each  other,  and  at  first  to  form 
such  unstable  modifications,  that  it  is  difficult,  if  not 
impossible,  to  see  how  such  indefinite  modifications  of 


278  LIFE  AND  HABIT. 

insignificant  beginnings  can  ever  build  up  a  sufficiently 
appreciable  resemblance  to  a  leaf,  bamboo,  or  other 
object  for  "  natural  selection,"  to  seize  upon  and  per- 
petuate. This  difficulty  is  augmented  when  we  consider 
— a  point  to  be  dwelt  upon  hereafter — how  necessary  it 
is  that  many  individuals  should  be  similarly  modified 
simultaneously.  This  has  been  insisted  on  in  an  able 
article  in  the  'North  British  Review'  for  June  1867, 
p.  286,  and  the  consideration  of  the  article  has  occa- 
sioned Mr.  Darwin "  ("  Origin  of  Species,"  5th  ed.,  p. 
104)  "to  make  an  important  modification  in  his  views" 
("  Genesis  of  Species,"  p.  38). 

To  this  Mr.  Darwin  rejoins  : — 

"  But  in  all  the  foregoing  cases  the  insects  in  their 
original  state,  no  doubt,  presented  some  rude  and  acci- 
dental resemblance  to  an  object  commonly  found  in  the 
stations  frequented  by  them.  Nor  is  this  improbable, 
considering  the  almost  infinite  number  of  surrounding 
objects,  and  the  diversity  of  form  and  colour  of  the  host 
of  insects  that  exist"  ("Natural  Selection,"  p.  182,  ed. 
1876). 

Mr.  Mivart  has  just  said :  "  It  is  difficult  to  see  how 
such  indefinite  modifications  of  insignificant  beginnings 
can  ever  build  up  a  sufficiently  appreciable  resemblance  to 
a  leaf,  bamboo,  or  oilier  object,  for  '  natural  selection '  to 
work  upon." 

The  answer  is,  that  "  natural  selection  "  did  not  begin 
to  work  until,  from  unknown  causes,  an  appreciable  re- 
semblance had  nevertheless  been  presented.  I  think  the 
reader  will  agree  with  me  that  the  development  of  the 
lowest  life  into  a  creature  which  bears  even  "  a  rude 


MR.  MIVART  AND  MR.  DARWIN.  279 

resemblance"  to  the  objects  commonly  found  in  the 
station  in  which  it  is  moving  in  its  present  differentia- 
tion, requires  more  explanation  than  is  given  by  the 
word  "  accidental." 

Mr.  Darwin  continues  :  "  As  some  rude  resemblance 
is  necessary  for  the  first  start,"  &c.;  and  a  little  lower 
he  writes :  "  Assuming  that  an  insect  originally  hap- 
pened to  resemble  in  some  degree  a  dead  twig  or  a 
decayed  leaf,  and  that  it  varied  slightly  in  many  ways, 
then  all  the  variations  which  rendered  the  insect  at  all 
more  like  any  such  object,  and  thus  favoured  its  escape, 
would  be  preserved,  while  other  variations  would  be 
neglected,  and  ultimately  lost,  or  if  they  rendered  the 
insect  at  all  less  like  the  imitated  object,  they  would 
be  eliminated." 

But  here,  again,  we  are  required  to  begin  with  Natu- 
ral Selection  when  the  work  is  already  in  great  part 
done,  owing  to  causes  about  which  we  are  left  com- 
pletely in  the  dark ;  we  may,  I  think,  fairly  demur  to 
the  insects  originally  happening  to  resemble  in  some 
degree  a  dead  twig  or  a  decayed  leaf.  And  when  we 
bear  in  mind  that  the  variations,  being  supposed  by  Mr. 
Darwin  to  be  indefinite,  or  devoid  of  aim,  will  appear 
in  every  direction,  we  cannot  forget  what  Mr.  Mivart 
insists  upon,  namely,  that  the  chances  of  many  favour- 
able variations  being  counteracted  by  other  unfavour- 
able ones  in  the  same  creature  are  not  inconsiderable. 
Nor,  again,  is  it  likely  that  the  favourable  variation 
would  make  its  mark  upon  the  race,  and  escape  being 
absorbed  in  the  course  of  a  few  generations,  unless — as 
Mr.  Mivart  elsewhere  points  out,  in  a  passage  to  which 


28o  LIFE  AND  HABIT, 

I  shall  call  the  reader's  attention  presently — a  larger 
number  of  similarly  varying  creatures  made  their  ap- 
pearance at  the  same  time  than  there  seems  sufficient 
reason  to  anticipate,  if  the  variations  can  be  called  for- 
tuitous. 

"  There  would,"  continues  Mr.  Darwin,  "  indeed  be 
force  in  Mr.  Mivart's  objection  if  we  were  to  attempt 
to  account  for  the  above  resemblances,  independently 
of  'natural  selection/  through  mere  fluctuating  varia- 
bility ;  but  as  the  case  stands,  there  is  none." 

This  comes  to"  saying  that,  if  there  was  no  power  in 
nature  which  operates  so  that  of  all  the  many  fluctu- 
ating variations,  those  only  are  preserved  which  tend 
to  the  resemblance  which  is  beneficial  to  the  creature, 
then  indeed  there  would  be  difficulty  in  understanding 
how  the  resemblance  could  have  come  about ;  but  that 
as  there  is  a  beneficial  resemblance  to  start  with,  and  as 
there  is  a  power  in  nature  which  would  preserve  and 
accumulate  further  beneficial  resemblance,  should  it 
arise  from  this  cause  or  that,  the  difficulty  is  removed. 
But  Mr.  Mivart  does  not,  I  take  it,  deny  the  existence 
of  such  a  power  in  nature,  as  Mr.  Darwin  supposes, 
though,  if  I  understand  him  rightly,  he  does  not  see 
that  its  operation  upon  small  fortuitous  variations  is  at 
all  the  simple  and  obvious  process,  which  on  a  super- 
ficial view  of  the  case  it  would  appear  to  be.  He  thinks — 
and  I  believe  the  reader  will  agree  with  him — that  this 
process  is  too  slow  and  too  risky.  What  he  wants  to 
know  is,  how  the  insect  came  even  rudely  to  resemble 
the  object,  and  how,  if  its  variations  are  indefinite,  we 
are  ever  to  get  into  such  a  condition  as  to  be  able  to 


MR.  M IV ART  AND  MR.  DARWIN.  281 

report  progress,  owing  to  the  constant  liability  of  the 
creature  which  has  varied  favourably,  to  play  the  part 
of  Penelope  and  undo  its  work,  by  varying  in  some  one 
of  the  infinite  number  of  other  directions  which  are 
open  to  it — all  of  which,  except  this  one,  tend  to  destroy 
the  resemblance,  and  yet  may  be  in  some  other  respect 
even  more  advantageous  to  the  creature,  and  so  tend  to 
its  preservation.  Moreover,  here,  too,  I  think  (though  I 
cannot  be  sure),  we  have  a  recurrence  of  the  original 
fallacy  in  the  words — "  If  we  were  to  account  for  the 
above  resemblances,  independently  of  'natural  selec- 
tion,' through  mere  fluctuating  variability."  Surely  Mr. 
Darwin  does,  after  all,  "  account  for  the  resemblances 
through  mere  fluctuating  variability,"  for  "  natural  selec- 
tion" does  not  account  for  one  single  variation  in  the 
whole  list  of  them  from  first  to  last,  other  than  in- 
directly, as  shewn  in  the  preceding  chapter. 

It  is  impossible  for  me  to  continue  this  subject  fur- 
ther ;  but  I  would  beg  the  reader  to  refer  to  other  para- 
graphs in  the  neighbourhood  of  the  one  just  quoted,  in 
which  he  may — though  I  do  not  think  he  will — see  reason 
to  think  that  I  should  have  given  Mr.  Darwin's  answer 
more  fully.  I  do  not  quote  Mr.  Darwin's  next  para- 
graph, inasmuch  as  I  see  no  great  difficulty  about  "  the 
last  touches  of  perfection  in  mimicry,"  provided  Mr. 
Darwin's  theory  will  account  for  any  mimicry  at  all. 
If  it  could  do  this,  it  might  as  well  do  more ;  but  a  strong 
impression  is  left  on  my  mind,  that  without  the  help  of 
something  over  and  above  the  power  to  vary,  which 
should  give  a  definite  aim  to  variations,  all  the  "  natural 
selection  "  in  the  world  would  not  have  prevented  stag- 


282  LIFE  AND  HABIT. 

nation  and  self-stultification,  owing  to  the  indefinite 
tendency  of  the  variations,  which  thus  could  not  have 
developed  either  a  preyer  or  a  preyee,  but  would  have 
gone  round  and  round  and  round  the  primordial  cell 
till  they  were  weary  of  it. 

As  against  Mr.  Darwin,  therefore,  I  think  that  the 
objection  just  given  from  Mr.  Mivart  is  fatal.  I  believe, 
also,  that  the  reader  will  feel  the  force  of  it  much  more 
strongly  if  he  will  turn  to  Mr.  Mivart's  own  pages. 
Against  the  view  which  I  am  myself  supporting,  the 
objection  breaks  down  entirely,  for  grant  "  a  little  dose  of 
judgement  and  reason  "  on  the  part  of  the  creature  itself 
— grant  also  continued  personality  and  memory — and 
a  definite  tendency  is  at  once  given  to  the  variations. 
The  process  is  thus  started,  and  is  kept  straight,  and 
helped  forward  through  every  stage  by  "  the  little  dose 
of  reason,"  &c.,  which  enabled  it  to  take  its  first  step. 
We  are,  in  fact,  no  longer  without  a  helm,  but  can  steer 
each  creature  that  is  so  discontented  with  its  condition, 
as  to  make  a  serious  effort  to  better  itself,  into  some — 
and  into  a  very  distant — harbour. 


It  has  been  objected  against  Mr.  Darwin's  theory  that 
if  all  species  and  genera  have  come  to  differ  through  the 
accumulation  of  minute  but — as  a  general  rule — fortui- 
tous variations,  there  has  not  been  time  enough,  so  far 
as  we  are  able  to  gather,  for  the  evolution  of  all  existing 
forms  by  so  slow  a  process.  On  this  subject  I  would 
again  refer  the  reader  to  Mr.  Mivart's  book,  from  whicli 
I  take  the  following : — 


MR.  M1VART  AND  MR.  DARWIN.  283 

"Sir  William  Thompson  has  lately  advanced  argu- 
ments from  three  distinct  lines  of  inquiry  agreeing  in 
one  approximate  result.  The  three  lines  of  inquiry  are — 
(i)  the  action  of  the  tides  upon  the  earth's  rotation  ;  (2) 
the  probable  length  of  time  during  which  the  sun  has 
illuminated  this  planet ;  and  (3)  the  temperature  of  the 
interior  of  the  earth.  The  result  arrived  at  by  these 
investigations  is  a  conclusion  that  the  existing  state  of 
things  on  the  earth,  life  on  the  earth,  all  geological  history 
showing  continuity  of  life,  must  be  limited  within  some 
such  period  of  past  time  as  one  hundred  million  years. 
The  first  question  which  suggests  itself,  supposing  Sir  W. 
Thompson's  views  to  be  correct,  is  :  Has  this  period  been 
anything  like  enough  for  the  evolution  of  all  organic 
forms  by  'natural  selection'  ?  The  second  is :  Has  the 
period  been  anything  like  enough  for  the  deposition  of 
the  strata  which  must  have  been  deposited  if  all  organic 
forms  have  been  evolved  by  minute  steps,  according  to 
the  Darwinian  theory  ? "  ("  Genesis  of  Species,"  p.  154). 

Mr.  Mivart  then  quotes  from  Mr.  Murphy — whose 
work  I  have  not  seen — the  following  passage : — 

"  Darwin  justly  mentions  the  greyhound  as  being 
equal  to  any  natural  species  in  the  perfect  co-ordination 
of  its  parts, '  all  adapted  for  extreme  fleetness  and  for 
running  down  weak  prey.'  Yet  it  is  an  artificial 
species  (and  not  physiologically  a  species  at  all)  formed 
by  a  long-continued  selection  under  domestication ;  and 
there  is  no  reason  to  suppose  that  any  of  the  variations 
which  have  been  selected  to  form  it  have  been  other 
than  gradual  and  almost  imperceptible.  Suppose  that 
it  has  taken  five  hundred  years  to  form  the  greyhound 


284  LIFE  AND  HABIT. " 

out  of  his  wolf-like  ancestor.  This  is  a  mere  guess,  but 
it  gives  the  order  of  magnitude.  Now,  if  so,  how  long 
would  it  take  to  obtain  an  elephant  from  a  protozoon  or 
even  from  a  tadpole-like  fish  ?  Ought  it  not  to  take 
much  more  than  a  million  times  as  long  ? "  ("  Genesis 
of  Species,"  p.  155). 

I  should  be  very  sorry  to  pronounce  any  opinion 
upon  the  foregoing  data;  but  a  general  impression  is 
left  upon  my  mind,  that  if  the  differences  between  an 
elephant  and  a  tadpole -like  fish  have  arisen  from  the 
accumulation  of  small  variations  that  have  had  no  direc- 
tion given  them  by  intelligence  and  sense  of  needs,  then 
no  time  conceivable  by  man  would  suffice  for  their 
development.  But  grant  "  a  little  dose  of  reason  and 
judgement,"  even  to  animals  low  down  in  the  scale  of 
nature,  and  grant  this,  not  only  during  their  later  life, 
but  during  their  embryological  existence,  and  see  with 
what  infinitely  greater  precision  of  aim  and  with  what 
increased  speed  the  variations  would  arise.  Evolution 
entirely  unaided  by  inherent  intelligence  must  be  a 
very  slow,  if  not  quite  inconceivable,  process.  Evolution 
helped  by  intelligence  would  still  be  slow,  but  not  so 
desperately  slow.  One  can  conceive  that  there  has 
been  sufficient  time  for  the  second,  but  one  cannot  con- 
ceive it  for  the  first. 


I  find  from  Mr.  Mivart  that  objection  has  been  taken 
to  Mr.  Darwin's  views,  on  account  of  the  great  odds 
that  exist  against  the  appearance  of  any  given  variation 


MR.  M IV ART  AND  MR.  DARWIN.  285 

at  one  and  the  same  time,  in  a  sufficient  number  of  in- 
dividuals, to  prevent  its  being  obliterated  almost  as  soon 
as  produced  by  the  admixture  of  unvaried  blood  which 
would  so  greatly  preponderate  around  it;  and  indeed 
the  necessity  for  a  nearly  simultaneous  and  similar 
variation,  or  readiness  so  to  vary  on  the  part  of  many 
individuals,  seems  almost  a  postulate  for  evolution  at 
all.  On  this  subject  Mr.  Mivart  writes : — 

"  The  '  North  British  Review '  (speaking  of  the  sup- 
position that  species  is  changed  by  the  survival  of  a  few 
individuals  in  a  century  through  a  similar  and  favour- 
able variation)  says — 

" '  It  is  very  difficult  to  see  how  this  can  be  accom- 
plished, even  when  the  variation  is  eminently  favourable 
indeed ;  and  still  more,  when  the  advantage  gained  is 
very  slight,  as  must  generally  be  the  case.  The  advan- 
tage, whatever  it  may  be,  is  utterly  outbalanced  by 
numerical  inferiority.  A  million  creatures  are  bom; 
ten  thousand  survive  to  produce  offspring.  One  of  the 
million  has  twice  as  good  a  chance  as  any  other  of  sur- 
viving, but  the  chances  are  fifty  to  one  against  the 
gifted  individuals  being  one  of  the  hundred  survivors. 
No  doubt  the  chances  are  twice  as  great  against  any 
other  individual,  but  this  does  not  prevent  their  being 
enormously  in  favour  of  some  average  individual. 
However  slight  the  advantage  may  be,  if  it  is 
shared  by  half  the  individuals  produced,  it  will  pro- 
bably be  present  in  at  least  fifty -one  of  the  sur- 
vivors, and  in  a  larger  proportion  of  their  offspring; 
but  the  chances  are  against  the  preservation  of  any 
one  "  sport "  (i.e.,  sudden  marked  variation)  in  a  mime- 


286  LIFE  AND  HABIT. 

rous  tribe.  The  vague  use  of  an  imperfectly-understood 
doctrine  of  chance,  has  led  Darwinian  supporters,  first, 
to  confuse  the  two  cases  above  distinguished,  and 
secondly,  to  imagine  that  a  very  slight  balance  in  favour 
of  some  individual  sport  must  lead  to  its  perpetuation. 
All  that  can  be  said  is  that  in  the  above  example  the 
favoured  sport  would  be  preserved  once  in  fifty  times. 
Let  us  consider  what  will  be  its  influence  on  the  main 
stock  when  preserved.  It  will  breed  and  have  a  pro- 
geny of  say  100 ;  now  this  progeny  will,  on  the  whole, 
be  intermediate  between  the  average  individual  and  the 
sport.  The  odds  in  favour  of  one  of  this  generation  of 
the  new  breed  will  be,  say  one  and  a  half  to  one,  as 
compared  with  the  average  individual;  the  odds  in 
their  favour  will,  therefore,  be  less  than  that  of  their 
parents ;  but  owing  to  their  greater  number  the  chances 
are  that  about  one  and  a  half  of  them  would  survive. 
Unless  these  breed  together — a  most  improbable  event — 
their  progeny  would  again  approach  the  average  indi- 
vidual; there  would  be  150  of  them,  and  their  supe- 
riority would  be,  say  in  the  ratio  of  one  and  a  quartei 
to  one ;  the  probability  would  now  be  that  nearly  two 
of  them  would  survive,  and  have  200  children  with  an 
eighth  superiority.  Eather  more  than  two  of  these 
would  survive ;  but  the  superiority  would  again 
dwindle;  until  after  a  few  generations  it  would  no 
longer  be  observed,  and  would  count  for  no  more  in  the 
struggle  for  life  than  any  of  the  hundred  trifling  advan- 
tages which  occur  in  the  ordinary  organs. 

"'An  illustration  will  bring  this  conception  home. 
Suppose   a  white  man  to  have  been  wrecked  on  an 


MR.  MI V ART  AND  MR.  DARWIN.  287 

island  inhabited  by  negroes,  and  to  have  established 
himself  in  friendly  relations  with  a  powerful  tribe, 
whose  customs  he  has  learnt.  Suppose  him  to  possess 
the  physical  strength,  energy,  and  ability  of  a  dominant 
white  race,  and  let  the  food  of  the  island  suit  his  con- 
stitution ;  grant  him  every  advantage  which  we  can 
conceive  a  white  to  possess  over  the  native;  concede 
that  in  the  struggle  for  existence,  his  chance  of  a  long 
life  will  be  much  superior  to  that  of  the  native  chiefs ; 
yet  from  all  these  admissions  there  does  not  follow  the 
conclusion,  that  after  a  limited  or  unlimited  number  of 
generations,  the  inhabitants  of  the  island  will  be  white. 
Our  shipwrecked  hero  would  probably  become  king ;  he 
would  kill  a  great  many  blacks  in  the  struggle  for 
existence;  he  would  have  a  great  many  wives  and 
children.  ...  In  the  first  generation  there  will  be 
some  dozens  of  intelligent  young  mulattoes,  much 
superior  in  average  intelligence  to  the  negroes.  We 
might  expect  the  throne  for  some  generations  to  be 
occupied  by  a  more  or  less  yellow  king ;  but  can  any 
one  believe  that  the  whole  island  will  gradually  acquire 
a  white,  or  even  a  yellow  population?  .  .  .  Darwin 
says,  that  in  the  struggle  for  life  a  grain  may  turn  the 
balance  in  favour  of  a  given  structure,  which  will  then 
be  preserved.  But  one  of  the  weights  in  the  scale  of 
nature  is  due  to  the  number  of  a  given  tribe.  Let 
there  be  7000  A's  and  7000  B's  representing  two 
varieties  of  a  given  animal,  and  let  all  the  B's,  in  virtue 
of  a  slight  difference  of  structure,  have  the  better 
chance  by  T^Vrr  part.  We  must  allow  that  there  is  a 
slight  probability  that  the  descendants  of  B  will  sup- 


288  LIFE  AND  HABIT. 

plant  the  descendants  of  A;  but  let  there  be  7001  A's 
against  7000  B's  at  first,  and  the  chances  are  once 
more  equal,  while  if  there  be  7002  A's  to  start,  the  odds 
would  be  laid  on  the  A's.  Thus  they  stand  a  greater 
chance  of  being  killed ;  but,  then,  they  can  better  afford 
to  be  killed.  The  grain  will  only  turn  the  scales  when 
these  are  very  nicely  balanced,  and  an  advantage  in 
numbers  counts  for  weight,  even  as  an  advantage  in 
structure.  As  the  numbers  of  the  favoured  variety 
diminish,  so  must  its  relative  advantages  increase,  if 
the  chance  of  its  existence  is  to  surpass  the  chance  of 
its  extinction,  until  hardly  any  conceivable  advantage 
would  enable  the  descendants  of  a  single  pair  to  exter- 
minate the  descendants  of  many  thousands,  if  they  and 
their  descendants  are  supposed  to  breed  freely  with  the 
inferior  variety,  and  so  gradually  lose  their  ascen- 
dancy,'" ("North  British  Review,"  June  1867,  p.  286 
"  Genesis  of  Species,"  p.  64,  and  onwards). 

Against  this  it  should  be  remembered  that  there  is 
always  an  antecedent  probability  that  several  specimens 
of  a  given  variation  would  appear  at  one  time  and  place. 
This  would  probably  be  the  case  even  on  Mr.  Darwin's 
hypothesis,  that  the  variations  are  fortuitous;  if  they 
are  mainly  guided  by  sense  of  need  and  intelligence,  it 
would  almost  certainly  be  so,  for  all  would  have  much 
the  same  idea  as  to  their  well-being,  and  the  same  cause 
which  would  lead  one  to  vary  in  this  direction  would 
lead  not  a  few  others  to  do  so  at  the  same  time,  or  to 
follow  suit.  Thus  we  see  that  many  human  ideas  and 
inventions  have  been  conceived  independently  but  simul- 
taneously. The  chances,  moreover,  of  specimens  that  have 


MR.  MIVART  AND  MR.  DARWIN.  289 

varied  successfully,  intermarrying,  are,  I  think,  greater 
than  the  reviewer  above  quoted  from  would  admit.  I 
believe  that  on  the  hypothesis  that  the  variations  are 
fortuitous,  and  certainly  on  the  supposition  that  they 
are  intelligent,  they  might  be  looked  for  in  members  of 
the  same  family,  who  would  hence  have  a  better  chance 
of  finding  each  other  out.  Serious  as  is  the  difficulty 
advanced  by  the  reviewer  as  against  Mr.  Darwin's 
theory,  it  may  be  in  great  measure  parried  without 
departing  from  Mr.  Darwin's  own  position,  but  the 
"  little  dose  of  judgement  and  reason  "  removes  it, 
absolutely  and  entirely.  As  for  the  reviewer's  ship- 
wrecked hero,  surely  the  reviewer  must  know  that  Mr. 
Darwin  would  no  more  expect  an  island  of  black  men 
to  be  turned  white,  or  even  perceptibly  whitened  after 
a  few  generations,  than  the  reviewer  himself  would  do 
so.  But  if  we  turn  from  what  "might"  or  what 
"  would "  happen  to  what  "  does "  happen,  we  find 
that  a  few  white  families  have  nearly  driven  the 
Indian  from  the  United  States,  the  Australian  natives 
from  Australia,  and  the  Maories  from  New  Zealand. 
True,  these  few  families  have  been  helped  by  immi- 
gration ;  but  it  will  be  admitted  that  this  has  only 
accelerated  a  result  which  would  otherwise,  none  the 
less  surely,  have  been  effected. 

There  is  all  the  difference  between  a  sudden  sport, 
or  even  a  variety  introduced  from  a  foreign  source,  and 
the  gradual,  intelligent,  and,  in  the  main,  steady,  growth 
of  a  race  towards  ends  always  a  little,  but  not  much,  in 
advance  of  what  it  can  at  present  compass,  until  it  has 
reached  equilibrium  with  its  surroundings.  So  far  as 


290  LIFE  AND  HABIT. 

Mr.  Darwin's  variations  are  of  the  nature  of  "sport," 
i.e.,  rare,  and  owing  to  nothing  that  we  can  in  the  least 
assign  to  any  known  cause,  the  reviewer's  objections 
carry  much  weight.  Against  the  view  here  advocated, 
they  are  powerless. 


I  cannot  here  go  into  the  difficulties  of  the  geologic 
record,  but  they  too  will,  I  believe,  be  felt  to  be  almost 
infinitely  simplified  by  supposing  the  development  of 
structure  and  instinct  to  be  guided  by  intelligence  and 
memory,  which,  even  under  unstable  conditions,  would 
be  able  to  meet  in  some  measure  the  demands  made 
upon  them. 


When  Mr.  Mivart  deals  with  evolution  and  ethics, 
I  am  afraid  that  I  differ  from  him  even  more  widely 
than  I  have  done  from  Mr.  Darwin.  He  writes 
("Genesis  of  Species,"  p.  234):  "That  'natural  selec- 
tion '  could  not  have  produced  from  the  sensations  of 
pleasure  and  pain  experienced  by  brutes  a  higher  degree 
of  morality  than  was  useful;  therefore  it  could  have 
produced  any  amount  of  'beneficial  habits,'  but  not 
abhorrence  of  certain  acts  as  impure  and  sinful." 

Possibly  "  natural  selection "  may  not  be  able  to  do 
much  in  the  way  of  accumulating  variations  that  do  not 
arise ;  but  that,  according  to  the  views  supported  in  this 
volume,  all  that  is  highest  and  most  beautiful  in  the 
soul,  as  well  as  in  the  body,  could  be,  and  has  been, 
developed  from  beings  lower  than  man,  I  do  not  greatly 


MR.  MIVART  AND  MR.  DARWIN.  291 

doubt.  Mr.  Mivart  and  myself  should  probably  differ 
as  to  what  is  and  what  is  not  beautiful.  Thus  he  writes 
of  "the  noble  virtue  of  a  Marcus  Aurelius"  (p.  235), 
than  whom,  for  my  own  part,  I  know  few  respectable 
figures  in  history  to  whom  I  am  less  attracted.  I  can- 
not but  think  that  Mr.  Mivart  has  taken  his  estimate 
of  this  emperor  at  second-hand,  and  without  reference 
to  the  writings  which  happily  enable  us  to  form  a  fair 
estimate  of  his  real  character. 

Take  the  opening  paragraphs  of  the  "  Thoughts  "  of 
Marcus  Aurelius,  as  translated  by  Mr.  Long : — 

"  From  the  reputation  and  remembrance  of  my  father 
[I  learned]  modesty  and  a  manly  character ;  from  my 
mother,  piety  and  beneficence,  abstinence  not  only  from 
evil  deeds,  but  even  from  evil  thoughts.  .  .  .  From  my 
great-grandfather,  not  to  have  frequented  public  schools, 
and  to  have  had  good  teachers  at  home,  and  to  know  that 
on  such  things  a  man  should  spend  liberally.  .  .  .  From 
Diognetus  ...  [I  learned]  to  have  become  intimate 
with  philosophy,  .  .  .  and  to  have  written  dialogues 
in  my  youth,  and  to  have  desired  a  plank  bed  and  skin, 
and  whatever  else  of  the  kind  belongs  to  the  Greek  dis- 
cipline. .  .  .  From  Rusticus  I  received  the  impression 
that  my  character  required  improvement  and  disci- 
pline ;"  and  so  on  to  the  end  of  the  chapter,  near  which, 
however,  it  is  right  to  say  that  there  appears  a  redeem- 
ing touch,  in  so  far  as  that  he  thanks  the  gods  that  he 
could  not  write  poetry,  and  that  he  had  never  occupied 
himself  about  the  appearance  of  things  in  the  heavens. 

Or,  again,  opening  Mr.  Long's  translation  at  random 
I  find  (p.  37) :— 


292  LIFE  AND  HABIT, 

"As  physicians  have  always  their  instruments  and 
knives  ready  for  cases  which  suddenly  require  their 
skill,  so  do  thou  have  principles  ready  for  the  under- 
standing of  things  divine  and  human,  and  for  doing 
everything,  even  the  smallest,  with  a  recollection  of  the 
bond  that  unites  the  divine  and  human  to  one  another. 
For  neither  wilt  thou  do  anything  well  which  pertains 
to  man  without  at  the  same  time  having  a  reference  to 
things  divine ;  nor  the  contrary." 

Unhappy  one !  No  wonder  the  Eoman  empire  went 
to  pieces  soon  after  him.  If  I  rememher  rightly,  he 
established  and  subsidised  professorships  in  all  parts  of 
his  dominions.  Whereon  the  same  befell  the  arts  and 
literature  of  Rome  as  befell  Italian  painting  after  the 
Academic  system  had  taken  root  at  Bologna  under  the 
Caracci.  Mr.  Martin  Tupper,  again,  is  an  amiable  and 
well-meaning  man,  but  we  should  hardly  like  to  see 
him  in  Lord  Beaconsfield's  place.  The  Athenians 
poisoned  Socrates ;  and  Aristophanes — than  whom  few 
more  profoundly  religious  men  have  ever  been  bom — 
did  not,  so  far  as  we  can  gather,  think  the  worse  of  his 
countrymen  on  that  account.  It  is  not  improbable  that 
if  they  had  poisoned  Plato  too,  Aristophanes  would  have 
been  well  enough  pleased ;  but  I  think  he  would  have 
preferred  either  of  these  two  men  to  Marcus  Aurelius. 

I  know  nothing  about  the  loving  but  manly  devotion 
of  a  St.  Lewis,  but  I  strongly  suspect  that  Mr.  Mivart 
has  taken  him,  too,  upon  hearsay. 

On  the  other  hand,  among  dogs  we  find  examples  of 
every  heroic  quality,  and  of  all  that  is  most  perfectly 
charming  to  us  in  man. 


MR.  M IV ART  AND  MR.  DARWIN.  293 

As  for  the  possible  development  of  the  more  brutal 
human  natures  from  the  more  brutal  instincts  of  the 
lower  animals,  those  who  read  a  horrible  story  told  in  a 
note,  pp.  233,  234  of  Mr.  Mivart's  "  Genesis  of  Species," 
will  feel  no  difficulty  on  that  score.  I  must  admit, 
however,  that  the  telling  of  that  story  seems  to  me  to 
be  a  mistake  in  a  philosophical  work,  which  should  not, 
I  think,  unless  under  compulsion,  deal  either  with  the 
horrors  of  the  French  Revolution — or  of  the  Spanish  or 
Italian  Inquisition. 

For  the  rest  of  Mr.  Mivart's  objections,  I  must  refer 
the  reader  to  his  own  work.  I  have  been  unable  to 
find  a  single  one,  which  I  do  not  believe  to  be  easily 
met  by  the  Lamarckian  view,  with  the  additions  (if 
indeed  they  are  additions,  for  I  must  own  to  no  very 
profound  knowledge  of  what  Lamarck  did  or  did  not 
say),  which  I  have  in  this  volume  proposed  to  make  to 
it.  At  the  same  time  I  admit,  that  as  against  the  Dar- 
winian view,  many  of  them  seern  quite  unanswerable. 


(294) 


CHAPTER  XV. 

CONCLUDING  REMARKS. 

HERE,  then,  I  leave  my  case,  though  well  aware  that  I 
have  crossed  the  threshold  only  of  my  subject.  My 
work  is  of  a  tentative  character,  put  before  the  public 
as  a  sketch  or  design  for  a,  possibly,  further  endeavour, 
in  which  I  hope  to  derive  assistance  from  the  criticisms 
which  this  present  volume  may  elicit.  Such  as  it  is, 
however,  for  the  present  I  must  leave  it. 

We  have  seen  that  we  cannot  do  anything  thoroughly 
till  we  can  do  it  unconsciously,  and  that  we  cannot  do 
anything  unconsciously  till  we  can  do  it  thoroughly; 
this  at  first  seems  illogical ;  but  logic  and  consistency 
are  luxuries  for  the  gods,  and  the  lower  animals,  only. 
Thus  a  boy  cannot  really  know  how  to  swim  till  he  can 
swim,  but  he  cannot  swim  till  he  knows  how  to  swim. 
Conscious  effort  is  but  the  process  of  rubbing  off  the 
rough  corners  from  these  two  contradictory  statements, 
till  they  eventually  fit  into  one  another  so  closely  that 
it  is  impossible  to  disjoin  them. 

Whenever,  therefore,  we  see  any  creature  able  to  go 
through  any  complicated  and  difficult  process  with  little 
or  no  effort — whether  it  be  a  bird  building  her  nest,  or 
a  hen's  egg  making  itself  into  a  chicken,  or  an  ovum 


CONCLUDING  REMARKS.  295 

turning  itself  into  a  baby — we  may  conclude  that  the 
creature  has  done  the  same  thing  on  a  very  great 
number  of  past  occasions. 

We  found  the  phenomena  exhibited  by  heredity  to 
be  so  like  those  of  memory,  and  to  be  so  utterly  in- 
explicable on  any  other  supposition,  that  it  was  easier 
to  suppose  them  due  to  memory  in  spite  of  the  fact  that 
we  cannot  remember  having  recollected,  than  to  believe 
that  because  we  cannot  so  remember,  therefore  the 
phenomena  cannot  be  due  to  memory. 

We  were  thus  led  to  consider  "  personal  identity,"  in 
order  to  see  whether  there  was  sufficient  reason  for 
denying  that  the  experience,  which  we  must  have 
clearly  gained  somewhere,  was  gained  by  us  when  we 
were  in  the  persons  of  our  forefathers ;  we  found,  not 
without  surprise,  that  unless  we  admitted  that  it  might 
be  so  gained,  in  so  far  as  that  we  once  actually  were  our 
remotest  ancestor,  we  must  change  our  ideas  concerning 
personality  altogether. 

We  therefore  assumed  that  the  phenomena  of  here- 
dity, whether  as  regards  instinct  or  structure  were 
mainly  due  to  memory  of  past  experiences,  accumu- 
lated and  fused  till  they  had  become  automatic,  or 
quasi  automatic,  much  in  the  same  way  as  after  a 
long  life — 

..."  Old  experience  do  attain 
To  something  like  prophetic  strain." 

After  dealing  with  certain  phenomena  of  memory, 
but  more  especially  with  its  abeyance  and  revival,  we 
inquired  what  the  principal  corresponding  phenomena 
u 


296  LIFE  AND  HABIT. 

of  life  and  species  should  be,  on  the  hypothesis  that 
they  were  mainly  due  to  memory. 

I  think  I  may  say  that  we  found  the  hypothesis  fit  in 
•with  actual  facts  in  a  sufficiently  satisfactory  manner. 
We  found  not  a  few  matters,  as,  for  example,  the  sterility 
of  hybrids,  the  phenomena  of  old  age,  and  puberty  as 
generally  near  the  end  of  development,  explain  them- 
selves with  more  completeness  than  I  have  yet  heard  of 
their  being  explained  on  any  other  hypothesis. 

We  considered  the  most  important  difficulty  in  the 
way  of  instinct  as  hereditary  habit,  namely,  the  struc- 
ture and  instincts  of  neuter  insects ;  these  are  very 
unlike  those  of  their  parents,  and  cannot  apparently 
be  transmitted  to  offspring  by  individuals  of  the  pre- 
vious generation,  in  whom  such  structure  and  instincts 
appeared,  inasmuch  as  these  creatures  are  sterile.  I  do 
not  say  that  the  difficulty  is  wholly  removed,  inasmuch 
as  some  obscurity  must  be  admitted  to  remain  as  to 
the  manner  in  which  the  structure  of  the  larva  is 
aborted ;  this  obscurity  is  likely  to  remain  till  we  know 
more  of  the  early  history  of  civilisation  among  bees 
than  I  can  find  that  we  know  at  present ;  but  I  believe 
the  difficulty  was  reduced  to  such  proportions  as  to 
make  it  little  likely  to  be  felt  in  comparison  with  that 
of  attributing  instinct  to  any  other  cause  than  inherited 
habit,  or  inherited  habit  modified  by  changed  conditions. 

We  then  inquired  what  was  the  great  principle  under- 
lying variation,  and  answered,  with  Lamarck,  that  it 
must  be  "sense  of  need;"  and  though  not  without 
being  haunted  by  suspicion  of  a  vicious  circle,  and  also 
well  aware  that  we  were  not  much  nearer  the  origin  of 


CONCLUDING  REMARKS.  297 

life  than  when  we  started,  we  still  concluded  that  here 
was  the  truest  origin  of  species,  and  hence  of  genera ; 
and  that  the  accumulation  of  variations,  which  in  time 
amounted  to  specific  and  generic  differences,  was  due 
to  intelligence  and  memory  on  the  part  of  the  creature 
varying,  rather  than  to  the  operation  of  what  Mr.  Dar- 
win has  called  "  natural  selection."  At  the  same  time 
we  admitted  that  the  course  of  nature  is  very  much  as 
Mr.  Darwin  has  represented  it,  in  this  respect,  in  so  far 
as  that  there  is  a  struggle  for  existence,  and  that  the 
weaker  must  go  to  the  wall.  But  we  denied  that  this 
part  of  the  course  of  nature  would  lead  to  much,  if 
any,  accumulation  of  variation,  unless  the  variation  was 
directed  mainly  by  intelligent  sense  of  need,  with  con- 
tinued personality  and  memory. 

We  conclude,  therefore,  that  the  small,  structureless, 
impregnate  ovum  from  which  we  have  each  one  of  us 
sprung,  has  a  potential  recollection  of  all  that  has  hap- 
pened to  each  one  of  its  ancestors  prior  to  the  period  at 
which  any  such  ancestor  has  issued  frpm  the  bodies  of 
its  progenitors — provided,  that  is  to  say,  a  sufficiently 
deep,  or  sufficiently  often-repeated,  impression  has  been 
made  to  admit  of  its  being  remembered  at  all. 

Each  step  of  normal  development  will  lead  the  im- 
pregnate ovum  up  to,  and  remind  it  of,  its  next  ordinary 
course  of  action,  in  the  same  way  as  we,  when  we  recite 
a  well-known  passage,  are  led  up  to  each  successive 
sentence  by  the  sentence  which  has  immediately  pre- 
ceded it. 

And  for  this  reason,  namely,  that  as  it  takes  two 
people  "  to  tell "  a  thing — a  speaker  and  a  comprehend- 


298  LIFE  AND  HABIT. 

ing  listener,  without  which  last,  though  much  may  have 
been  said,  there  has  been  nothing  told — so  also  it  takes 
two  people,  as  it  were,  to  "remember"  a  thing — the  crea- 
ture remembering,  and  the  surroundings  of  the  creature 
at  the  time  it  last  remembered.  Hence,  though  the 
ovum  immediately  after  impregnation  is  instinct  with 
all  the  memories  of  both  parents,  not  one  of  these 
memories  can  normally  become  active  till  both  the 
ovum  itself,  and  its  surroundings,  are  sufficiently  like 
what  they  respectively  were,  when  the  occurrence  now 
to  be  remembered  last  took  place.  The  memory  will 
then  immediately  return,  and  the  creature  will  do  as  it 
did  on  the  last  occasion  that  it  was  in  like  case  as  now. 
This  ensures  that  similarity  of  order  shall  be  preserved 
in  all  the  stages  of  development,  in  successive  genera- 
tions. 

Life,  then,  is  faith  founded  upon  experience,  which 
experience  is  in  its  turn  founded  upon  faith — or  more 
simply,  it  is  memory.  Plants  and  animals  only  differ 
from  one  another  because  they  remember  different 
things ;  plants  and  animals  only  grow  up  in  the  shapes 
they  assume  because  this  shape  is  their  memory,  their 
idea  concerning  their  own  past  history. 

Hence  the  term  "  Natural  History,"  as  applied  to  the 
different  plants  and  animals  around  us.  For  surely  the 
study  of  natural  history  means  only  the  study  of  plants 
and  animals  themselves,  which,  at  the  moment  of  using 
the  words  "  Natural  History,"  we  assume  to  be  the  most 
important  part  of  nature. 

A  living  creature  well  supported  by  a  mass  of  healthy 
ancestral  memory  is  a  young  and  growing  creature,  free 


CONCLUDING  REMARKS.  299 

from  ache  or  pain,  and  thoroughly  acquainted  with  its 
business  so  far,  but  with  much  yet  to  be  reminded  of. 
A  creature  which  finds  itself  and  its  surroundings  not 
so  unlike  those  of  its  parents  about  the  time  of  their 
begetting  it,  as  to  be  compelled  to  recognise  that  it 
never  yet  was  in  any  such  position,  is  a  creature  in  the 
heyday  of  life.  A  creature  which  begins  to  be  aware 
of  itself  is  one  which  is  beginning  to  recognise  that  the 
situation  is  a  new  one. 

It  is  the  young  and  fair,  then,  who  are  the  truly  old 
and  the  truly  experienced ;  it  is  they  who  alone  have  a 
trustworthy  memory  to  guide  them ;  they  alone  know 
things  as  they  are,  and  it  is  from  them  that,  as  we 
grow  older,  we  must  study  if  we  would  still  cling  to 
truth.  The  whole  charm  of  youth  lies  in  its  advantage 
over  age  in  respect  of  experience,  and  where  this  has 
for  some  reason  failed,  or  been  misapplied,  the  charm  is 
broken.  When  we  say  that  we  are  getting  old,  we  should 
say  rather  that  we  are  getting  new  or  young,  and  are 
suffering  from  inexperience,  which  drives  us  into  doing 
things  which  we  do  not  understand,  and  lands  us,  even- 
tually, in  the  utter  impotence  of  death.  The  kingdom 
of  heaven  is  the  kingdom  of  little  children. 

A  living  creature  bereft  of  all  memory  dies.  If  be- 
reft of  a  great  part  of  memory,  it  swoons  or  sleeps ;  and 
when  its  memory  returns,  we  say  it  has  returned  to  life. 

Life  and  death,  then,  should  be  memory  and  forget- 
fulness,  for  we  are  dead  to  all  that  we  have  forgotten. 

Life  is  that  property  of  matter  whereby  it  can  re- 
member. Matter  which  can  remember  is  living ;  matter 
which  cannot  remember  is  dead. 


3oo  LIFE  AND  HABIT. 

Life,  then,  is  memory.  The  life  of  a  creature  is  the 
memory  of  a  creature.  "We  are  all  the  same  stuff  to 
start  with,  but  we  remember  different  things,  and  if  we 
did  not  remember  different  things  we  should  be  abso- 
lutely like  each  other.  As  for  the  stuff  itself  of  which 
we  are  made,  we  know  nothing  save  only  that  it  is 
"  such  as  dreams  are  made  of." 


I  am  aware  that  there  are  many  expressions  through- 
out this  book,  which  are  not  scientifically  accurate. 
Thus  I  imply  that  we  tend  towards  the  centre  of  the 
earth,  when,  I  believe,  I  should  say  we  tend  towards  to 
the  centre  of  gravity  of  the  earth.  I  speak  of  "  the  pri- 
mordial cell,"  when  I  mean  only  the  earliest  form  of 
life,  and  I  thus  not  only  assume  a  single  origin  of  life 
when  there  is  no  necessity  for  doing  so,  and  perhaps  no 
evidence  to  this  effect,  but  I  do  so  in  spite  of  the  fact 
that  the  amoeba,  which  seems  to  be  "  the  simplest  form 
of  life,"  does  not  appear  to  be  a  cell  at  all.  I  have  used 
the  word  "  beget,"  of  what,  I  am  told,  is  asexual  genera- 
tion, whereas  the  word  should  be  confined  to  sexual 
generation  only.  Many  more  such  errors  have  been 
pointed  out  to  me,  and  I  doubt  not  that  a  larger  num- 
ber remain  of  which  I  know  nothing  now,  but  of  which 
I  may  perhaps  be  told  presently. 

I  did  not,  however,  think  that  in  a  work  of  this 
description  the  additional  words  which  would  have 
been  required  for  scientific  accuracy  were  worth  the 
paper  and  ink  and  loss  of  breadth  which  their  intro- 
duction would  entail.  Besides,  I  know  nothing  about 


CONCLUDING  REMARKS.  301 

science,  and  it  is  as  well  that  there  should  be  no  mis- 
take on  this  head ;  I  neither  know,  nor  want  to  know, 
more  detail  than  is  necessary  to  enable  me  to  give  a 
fairly  broad  and  comprehensive  view  of  my  subject. 
When  for  the  purpose  of  giving  this,  a  matter  impor- 
tunately insisted  on  being  made  out,  I  endeavoured  to 
make  it  out  as  well  as  I  could ;  otherwise — that  is  to 
say,  if  it  did  not  insist  on  being  looked  into,  in  spite  of 
a  good  deal  of  snubbing,  I  held  that,  as  it  was  blurred 
and  indistinct  in  nature,  I  had  better  so  render  it  in  my 
work. 

Nevertheless,  if  one  has  gone  for  some  time  through 
a  wood  full  of  burrs,  some  of  them  are  bound  to  stick. 
I  am  afraid  that  I  have  left  more  such  burrs  in 
one  part  and  another  of  my  book,  than  the  kind  of 
reader  whom  I  alone  wish  to  please  will  perhaps  put 
up  with.  Fortunately,  this  kind  of  reader  is  the  best- 
natured  critic  in  the  world,  and  is  long  suffering  of  a 
good  deal  that  the  more  consciously  scientific  will  not 
tolerate;  I  wish,  however,  that  I  had  not  used  such 
expressions  as  "  centres  of  thought  and  action  "  quite  so 
often. 

As  for  the  kind  of  inaccuracy  already  alluded  to,  my 
reader  will  not,  I  take  it,  as  a  general  rule,  know,  or 
wish  to  know,  much  more  about  science  than  I  do, 
sometimes  perhaps  even  less;  so  that  he  and  I  shall 
commonly  be  wrong  in  the  same  places,  and  our  two 
wrongs  will  make  a  sufficiently  satisfactory  right  for 
practical  purposes. 

Of  course,  if  I  were  a  specialist  writing  a  treatise  or 
primer  on  such  and  such  a  point  of  detail,  I  admit  that 


302  LIFE  AND  HABIT. 

scientific  accuracy  would  be  de  rigutur;  but  I  have  been 
trying  to  paint  a  picture  rather  than  to  make  a  dia- 
gram, and  I  claim  the  painter's  license  "quidlibct 
audendi"  I  have  done  my  utmost  to  give  the  spirit  of 
my  subject,  but  if  the  letter  interfered  with  the  spirit,  I 
have  sacrificed  it  without  remorse. 

May  not  what  is  commonly  called  a  scientific  subject 
have  artistic  value  which  it  is  a  pity  to  neglect  ?  But 
if  a  subject  is  to  be  treated  artistically — that  is  to  say, 
with  a  desire  to  consider  not  only  the  facts,  but  the  way 
in  which  the  reader  will  feel  concerning  those  facts, 
and  the  way  in  which  he  will  wish  to  see  them  rendered, 
thus  making  his  mind  a  factor  of  the  intention,  over 
and  above  the  subject  itself — then  the  writer  must  not 
be  denied  a  painter's  license.  If  one  is  painting  a  hill- 
side at  a  sufficient  distance,  and  cannot  see  whether  it  is 
covered  with  chestnut-trees  or  walnuts,  one  is  not  bound 
to  go  across  the  valley  to  see.  If  one  is  painting  a  city, 
it  is  not  necessary  that  one  should  know  the  names  of 
the  streets.  If  a  house  or  tree  stands  inconveniently 
for  one's  purpose,  it  must  go  without  more  ado ;  if  two 
important  features,  neither  of  which  can  be  left  out, 
want  a  little  bringing  together  or  separating  before  the 
spirit  of  the  place  can  be  well  given,  they  must  be 
brought  together,  or  separated.  Which  is  a  more  truth- 
ful view,  of  Shrewsbury,  for  example,  from  a  spot  where 
St.  Alkmund's  spire  is  in  parallax  with  St.  Mary's — a 
view  which  should  give  only  the  one  spire  which  can  be 
seen,  or  one  which  should  give  them  both,  although  the 
one  is  hidden  ?  There  would  be,  I  take  it,  more  repre- 
sentation in  the  misrepresentation  than  in  the  repre- 


CONCLUDING  REMARKS.  303 

sentation — "  the  half  would  be  greater  than  the  whole/ 
unless,  that  is  to  say,  one  expressly  told  the  spectator 
that  St.  Alkniund's  spire  was  hidden  behind  St.  Mary's — 
a  sort  of  explanation  which  seldom  adds  to  the  poetical 
value  of  any  work  of  art.  Do  what  one  may,  and  no 
matter  how  scientific  one  may  be,  one  cannot  attain 
absolute  truth.  The  question  is  rather,  how  do  people 
like  to  have  their  error  ?  than,  will  they  go  without  any 
error  at  all  ?  All  truth  and  no  error  cannot  be  given  by 
the  scientist  more  than  by  the  artist ;  each  has  to  sacri- 
fice truth  in  one  way  or  another ;  and  even  if  perfect 
truth  could  be  given,  it  is  doubtful  whether  it  would  not 
resolve  itself  into  unconsciousness  pure  and  simple,  con- 
sciousness being,  as  it  were,  the  clash  of  small  conflicting 
perceptions,  without  which  there  is  neither  intelligence 
nor  recollection  possible.  It  is  not,  then,  what  a  man 
has  said,  nor  what  he  has  put  down  with  actual  paint 
upon  his  canvass,  which  speaks  to  us  with  living  lan- 
guage— it  is  what  Jie  has  ihouylit  to  us  (as  is  so  well 
put  in  the  letter  quoted  on  page  83),  by  which  our 
opinion  should  be  guided ; — what  has  he  made  us  feel 
that  he  had  it  in  him,  and  wished  to  do  ?  If  he  has  said 
or  painted  enough  to  make  us  feel  that  he  meant  and 
felt  as  we  should  wish  him  to  have  done,  he  has  done 
the  utmost  that  man  can  hope  to  do. 

I  feel  sure  that  no  additional  amount  of  technical 
accuracy  would  make  me  more  likely  to  succeed,  in  this 
respect,  if  I  have  otherwise  failed ;  and  as  this  is  the 
only  success  about  which  I  greatly  care,  I  have  left  my 
scientific  inaccuracies  unconnected,  even  when  aware  of 
them.  At  the  same  time,  I  should  say  that  I  have 


304  LIFE  AND  HABIT. 

taken  all  possible  pains  as  regards  anything  which  I 
thought  could  materially  affect  the  argument  one  way 
or  another. 

It  may  be  said  that  I  have  fallen  between  two  stools, 
and  that  the  subject  is  one  which,  in  my  hands,  has 
shown  neither  artistic  nor  scientific  value.  This  would 
be  serious.  To  fall  between  two  stools,  and  to  be 
hanged  for  a  lamb,  are  the  two  crimes  which — 

"  Nor  gods,  nor  men,  nor  any  schools  allow." 

Of  the  latter,  I  go  in  but  little  danger ;  about  the 
former,  I  shall  know  better  when  the  public  have 
enlightened  me. 

The  practical  value  of  the  views  here  advanced  (if 
they  be  admitted  as  true  at  all)  would  appear  to  be  not 
inconsiderable,  alike  as  regards  politics  or  the  well- 
being  of  the  community,  and  medicine  which  deals  with 
that  of  the  individual.  In  the  first  case  we  see  the 
rationale  of  compromise,  and  the  equal  folly  of  making 
experiments  upon  too  large  a  scale,  and  of  not  making 
them  at  all.  We  see  that  new  ideas  cannot  be  fused 
with  old,  save  gradually  and  by  patiently  leading  up  to 
them  in  such  a  way  as  to  admit  of  a  sense  of  continued 
identity  between  the  old  and  the  new.  This  should 
teach  us  moderation.  For  even  though  nature  wishes 
to  travel  in  a  certain  direction,  she  insists  on  being 
allowed  to  take  her  own  time ;  she  will  not  be  hurried, 
and  will  cull  a  creature  out  even  more  surely  for  fore- 
stalling her  wishes  too  readily,  than  for  lagging  a  little 
behind  them.  So  the  greatest  musicians,  painters,  and 
poets  owe  their  greatness  rather  to  their  fusion  and  as- 


CONCLUDING  REMARKS.  305 

similation  of  all  the  good  that  has  been  done  up  to,  and 
especially  near  about,  their  own  time,  than  to  any  very 
startling  steps  they  have  taken  in  advance.  Such  men 
will  be  sure  to  take  some,  and  important,  steps  forward  ; 
for  unless  they  have  this  power,  they  will  not  be  able  to 
assimilate  well  what  has  been  done  already,  and  if  they 
have  it,  their  study  of  older  work  will  almost  indefi- 
nitely assist  it ;  but,  on  the  whole,  they  owe  their  great- 
ness to  their  completer  fusion  and  assimilation  of  older 
ideas ;  for  nature  is  distinctly  a  fairly  liberal  conserva- 
tive rather  than  a  conservative  liberal.  All  which  is 
well  said  in  the  old  couplet — 

"  Be  not  the  first  by  whom  the  new  is  tried, 
Nor  yet  the  last  to  throw  the  old  aside." 

Mutatis  mutandis,  the  above  would  seem  to  hold  aa 
truly  about  medicine  as  about  politics.  We  cannot 
reason  with  our  cells,  for  they  know  so  much  more  than 
we  do  that  they  cannot  understand  us; — but  though  we 
cannot  reason  with  them,  we  can  find  out  what  they 
have  been  most  accustomed  to,  and  what,  therefore,  they 
are  most  likely  to  expect;  we  can  see  that  they  get 
this,  as  far  as  it  is  in  our  power  to  give  it  them,  and 
may  then  generally  leave  the  rest  to  them,  only  bearing 
in  mind  that  they  will  rebel  equally  against  too  sudden 
a  change  of  treatment,  and  no  change  at  all. 

Friends  have  complained  to  me  that  they  can  never 
tell  whether  I  am  in  jest  or  earnest.  I  think,  however, 
it  should  be  sufficiently  apparent  that  I  am  in  very 
serious  earnest,  perhaps  too  much  so,  from  the  first  page 
of  my  book  to  the  last.  I  am  not  aware  of  a  single 
argument  put  forward  which  is  not  a  londfide  argument, 


306  LIFE  AND  HABIT. 

although,  perhaps,  sometimes  admitting  of  a  humorous 
side.  If  a  grain  of  corn  looks  like  a  piece  of  chaff,  I 
confess  I  prefer  it  occasionally  to  something  which 
looks  like  a  grain,  but  which  turns  out  to  be  a  piece  of 
chaff  only.  There  is  no  lack  of  matter  of  this  descrip- 
tion going  about  in  some  very  decorous  volumes ;  I  have, 
therefore,  endeavoured,  for  a  third  time,  to  furnish  the 
public  with  a  book  whose  fault  should  lie  rather  in  the 
direction  of  seeming  less  serious  than  it  is,  than  of  being 
less  so  than  it  seems. 

At  the  same  time,  I  admit  that  when  I  began  to 
write  upon  my  subject  I  did  not  seriously  believe  in  it. 
I  saw,  as  it  were,  a  pebble  upon  the  ground,  with  a 
sheen  that  pleased  me ;  taking  it  up,  I  turned  it  over 
and  over  for  my  amusement,  and  found  it  always  grow 
brighter  and  brighter  the  more  I  examined  it.  At 
length  I  became  fascinated,  and  gave  loose  rein  to  self- 
illusion.  The  aspect  of  the  world  seemed  changed ;  the 
trifle  which  I  had  picked  up  idly  had  proved  to  be  a 
talisman  of  inestimable  value,  and  had  opened  a  door 
through  which  I  caught  glimpses  of  a  strange  and 
interesting  transformation.  Then  came  one  who  told 
me  that  the  stone  was  not  mine,  but  that  it  had  been 
dropped  by  Lamarck,  to  whom  it  belonged  rightfully, 
but  who  had  lost  it  j  whereon  I  said  I  cared  not  who 
was  tiie  owner,  if  only  I  might  use  it  and  enjoy  it. 
Now,  therefore,  having  polished  it  with  what  art  and 
care  one  who  is  no  jeweller  could  bestow  upon  it,  I 
return  it,  as  best  I  may,  to  its  possessor. 

What  am  I  to  think  or  say  ?  That  I  tried  to  deceive 
others  till  I  have  fallen  a  victim  to  my  own  falsehood  ? 


CONCLUDING  REMARKS.  307 

Surely  this  is  the  most  reasonable  conclusion  to  arrive 
at.  Or  that  I  have  really  found  Lamarck's  talisman, 
•which  had  been  for  some  time  lost  sight  of? 

Will  the  reader  bid  me  wake  with  him  to  a  world 
of  chance  and  blindness  ?  Or  can  I  persuade  him  to 
dream  with  me  of  a  more  living  faith  than  either  he  or 
I  had  as  yet  conceived  as  possible  ?  As  I  have  said, 
reason  points  remorselessly  to  an  awakening,  but  faith 
and  hope  still  beckon  to  the  dream. 


APPENDIX 

AUTHOR'S  ADDENDA 


See  Page  13 

BUT  I  may  say  in  passing  that  though  articulate 
speech  and  the  power  to  maintain  the  upright  position 
come  much  about  the  same  time,  yet  the  power  of 
making  gestures  of  more  or  less  significance  is  prior 
to  that  of  walking  uprightly,  and  therefore  to  that  of 
speech.  Not  only  is  gesticulation  the  earlier  faculty 
in  the  individual,  but  it  was  so  also  in  the  history  of 
our  race.  Our  semi-simious  ancestors  could  gesticulate 
long  before  they  could  talk  articulately.  It  is  signifi- 
cant of  this  that  gesture  is  still  found  easier  than 
speech  even  by  adults,  as  may  be  observed  on  our  river 
steamers,  where  the  captain  moves  his  hand  but  does 
not  speak,  a  boy  interpreting  his  gesture  into  language. 
To  develop  this  here  would  complicate  the  argument ; 
let  us  be  content  to  note  it  and  pass  on. 

II 

See  Page  18 

Nevertheless,  the  smallness  of  the  effort  touches 
upon  the  deepest  mystery  of  organic  life — the  power  to 
originate,  to  err,  to  sport,  the  power  which  differen- 
tiates the  living  organism  from  the  machine,  however 
complicated.  The  action  and  working  of  this  power  is 
308 


APPENDIX  309 

found  to  be  like  the  action  of  any  other  mental  and, 
therefore,  physical  power  (for  all  physical  action  of 
living  beings  is  but  the  expression  of  a  mental  action), 
but  I  can  throw  no  light  upon  its  origin  any  more 
than  upon  the  origin  of  life.  This,  too,  must  be  noted 
and  passed  over. 

Ill 

See  Page  25 

How  different  from  the  above  uncertain  sound  is 
the  full  clear  note  of  one  who  truly  believes : — 

"  The  Church  of  England  is  commonly  called  a 
Lutheran  church,  but  whoever  compares  it  with  the 
Lutheran  churches  on  the  Continent  will  have  reason 
to  congratulate  himself  on  its  superiority.  It  is  in 
fact  a  church  sui  generis,  yielding  in  point  of  dignity, 
purity  and  decency  of  its  doctrines,  establishment  and 
ceremonies,  to  no  congregation  of  Christians  in  the 
world ;  modelled  to  a  certain  and  considerable  extent, 
but  not  entirely,  by  our  great  and  wise  pious  re- 
formers on  the  doctrines  of  Luther,  so  far  as  they  are 
in  conformity  with  the  sure  and  solid  foundation  on 
which  it  rests,  and  we  trust  for  ever  will  rest — the 
authority  of  the  Holy  Scriptures,  Jesus  Christ  himself 
being  the  chief  corner  stone."  ("Sketch  of  Modern 
and  Antient  Geography,"  by  Dr.  Samuel  Butler,  of 
Shrewsbury.  Ed.  1813.) 

This  is  the  language  of  faith,  compelled  by  the 
exigencies  of  the  occasion  to  be  for  a  short  time  con- 
scious of  its  own  existence,  but  surely  very  little 
likely  to  become  so  to  the  extent  of  feeling  the  need 
of  any  assistance  from  reason.  It  is  the  language  of 
one  whose  convictions  are  securely  founded  upon  the 
current  opinion  of  those  among  whom  he  has  been 
born  and  bred ;  and  of  all  merely  post-natal  faiths  a 


3io  APPENDIX 

faith  so  founded  is  the  strongest.  It  is  pleasing  to 
see  that  the  only  alterations  in  the  edition  of  1838 
consist  in  spelling  Christians  with  a  capital  C  and 
the  omission  of  the  epithet  "  wise  "  as  applied  to  the 
reformers,  an  omission  more  probably  suggested  by  a 
desire  for  euphony  than  by  any  nascent  doubts  con- 
cerning the  applicability  of  the  epithet  itself. 

IV 

See  Page  239 

Or  take,  again,  the  constitution  of  the  Church  of 
England.  The  bishops  are  the  spiritual  queens,  the 
clergy  are  the  neuter  workers.  They  differ  widely  in 
structure  (for  dress  must  be  considered  as  a  part  of 
structure),  in  the  delicacy  of  the  food  they  eat  and  the 
kind  of  house  they  inhabit,  and  also  in  many  of  their 
instincts,  from  the  bishops,  who  are  their  spiritual 
parents.  Not  only  this,  but  there  are  two  distinct 
kinds  of  neuter  workers — priests  and  deacons ;  and  of 
the  former  there  are  deans,  archdeacons,  prebends, 
canons,  rural  deans,  vicars,  rectors,  curates,  yet  all 
spiritually  sterile.  In  spite  of  this  sterility,  however, 
is  there  anyone  who  will  maintain  that  the  widely 
differing  structures  and  instincts  of  these  castes  are 
not  due  to  inherited  spiritual  habit?  Still  less  will 
he  be  inclined  to  do  so  when  he  reflects  that  by  such 
slight  modification  of  treatment  as  consecration  and 
endowment  any  one  of  them  can  be  rendered  spiritu- 
ally fertile. 


WM.    BRENDOK  AKD  SON,  LTD.,   PRINTERS,   PLYMOUTH 


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